DA will start selling rice at P20 per kilo – Tiu Laurel
Agriculture Sec. Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. delivers a speech at a ceremonial turnover of National Food Authority rice to local government units on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. The event was held at an NFA Warehouse in Valenzuela City. (INQUIRER photo / NIÑO JESUS ORBETA)
[Updated April 23, 2025, 4:45 p.m.]
MANILA, Philippines — Agriculture Secretary Francisco “Kiko” Tiu Laurel Jr. announced on Wednesday that the Department of Agriculture will begin selling rice at P20 per kilo in Visayas.
This initiative will be piloted in Regions 6, 7, and 8 next week.
Tiu Laurel said this after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. presided over a closed-door meeting with governors from said regions. Marcos promised to bring down the price of rice to P20 per kilo during his 2022 election campaign.
READ: Sotto, Lacson differ on P20 / kilo rice; Binay bats for better irrigation
According to the agriculture secretary, the program will run until December but it may be extended until February 2026.
“Our president has given the directive to the Department of Agriculture (DA) to formulate this to be sustainable and ituloy tuloy hanggang 2028 (make it continue until 2028),” Tiu Laurel said in a press conference in Cebu.
“The reason we had a meeting today is because, well… it’s a bit bad to say, but the people here need it more,” he added in Filipino.
“The gap between the P20 and the current market prices of P30 to P32 in the market has been discussed to be shared by the national government and selected LGUs that will be participating in the program,” he also said.
He further said through the program, the DA will release its 358,000 metric tons of rick buffer stocks in warehouses.
“Some people might ask. Actually, we’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Because as you know, ever since I came into office, that was the basic question: Can we give P20 rice to the masses?” he recalled.
“At that time, I always answered that it is an aspiration of this administration. So it was always on our mind that the DA team has been working day and night on how to bring this to reality,” Tiu Laurel told reporters.
