CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines – A official from the Region 7 office of the National Food Authority (NFA) announced that even if Central Visayas is not a rice producing region it will still have an adequate supply of rice given the agency’s current 1.4 million bags of rice inventory.

Lucy Rosales, NFA 7 regional information officer said in a forum here yesterday that aside from thecurrent stock of 1.4 million bags of rice, the agency is also expecting the arrival of over 300,000 bags of rice as part of this year’s national importation.

“Government will be importing 200,000 metric tons of rice with 18,000 metric tons is allocated for Central Visayas,” Rosales explained. She added that the current supply will last for about five to six months if there no calamities occur even as the NFA is strengthening its local rice buying program which will benefit local farmers, as the country gears to become sufficient in rice by 2016.

Meanwhile, NFA 7 is continuously advocating the use of iron fortified rice, which was launched last March to reduce the continuing problem of micronutrient deficiency in the country.

Rosales disclosed that a number of stores in the region are already selling iron-fortified rice (IFR) even as they tap more NFA-accredited store to trade for the said rice. It can be recalled that IFR was already in the market before but it was not successful enough to hit its goal then due to the lack of advocacy and information dissemination.

Thus, this time, the agency intends to double up efforts to reach its target of reducing deficiency caused by the lack vitamin A, iron and iodine.