We may have enough commercial rice supply from private traders but not cheap rice supply from the National Food Authority.
Rice prices have stabilized, all right, but at the highest levels so far; and for the first time, cheap rice is not available for poor consumers at NFA sales outlets nationwide!
If in the past the public lamented the long queues of poor consumers at sales outlets selling relatively cheap NFA rice in limited quantity per person — a familiar scene during the Arroyo and Aquino administrations — the situation is probably the worst under the Duterte administration.
Even if poor consumers are very much willing to fall in line, patiently wait, and buy limited-quantity cheap rice, there are no such propoor outlets selling cheap NFA rice!
Certainly, the present untenable situation, bred by lack of appropriate government intervention in the rice industry, needs prompt and decisive action by the Duterte administration and its allies in Congress.
MARCELO L. TECSON, martecson@yahoo.com