Commercial rice supply down, prices up in C. Visayas

EDWIN Sabillano, one of several stallholders that sell rice in T. Padilla Public Market in Cebu City, voiced concern over the recent P4 increase in rice sold per kilo.

“We have no choice because our supplier in Mandaue City raised his price on every bag of rice. If we don’t keep up, we get nothing from our small business,” Sabillano said.

The National Food Authority in Central Visayas said there is a lower supply of commercial rice in the markets since June-September are non-harvest months.

NFA-7 Regional Director Efren Sabong said the prices of commercial premium rice in the market went up from P1 to P2 based on their monitoring of all big markets in Region 7.

That’s not very comforting to stallholders like Sabillano, whose well-milled rice is sold at P38-P46 per kilo.

Last month he used to sell P34 per kilo of well-milled senandomeng rice.

His broken rice is sold at P34 per kilo, up from P30 per kilo.

“There are customers who really can’t afford the price of well-milled rice, so they go for the broken rice. Others just choose corn grits which is at P32 per kilo. We have NFA rice at P27, that’s the cheapest we have here,” Sabillano said.

The increase in rice prices also hit the suppliers of hanging rice locally known as puso.

Cresencia Tanyag, a puso supplier to eateries in Ramos Street in Cebu City, said she decided to make her puso smaller..

Sabong said Cebu has 1.2 million bags of rice out of the P1.3 million allocated in Region 7.

Sabong said based on their estimates, NFA’s stock of rice will last for 38 days or more than one month.