Bohol to buy rice as buffer stocks?

The province of Bohol together with Cebu and Saranggani has expressed interests to buy rice as part of the precautionary measures amid the fight against COVID-19 disease.
Governor Art C. Yap during the press briefing last Thursday at the Capitol said that right now the governors are discussing on how to buy from rice producing provinces.
Gov. Yap said that he is now waiting for the submission of price quotations from Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan and Cagayan.
The governor explained that if the prices are good, Bohol will buy from them. But if the prices are too high it will not stop us from buying ourselves and if maybe we will buy our own rice to support our farmers, he clarified.
Gov. Yap issued the statement after he said that he was briefed by the National Food Authority (NFA) regarding the food security stock of NFA rice in Bohol.
He said that in reality if we just consume based on our regular consumption then we will actually not run out of supply. The problem is everybody is rushing to buy more stock which resulted to unduly depleting our rice stocks and with this we are pushing the price of rice goes up.
The governor said that this is the reason why he cautioned the Municipal Local Government Units (MLGUs) and barangays of indiscriminate buying of rice and instead advised them to buy rice regularly because it is now the harvest period.
Assistant Provincial Agriculturist Larry M. Pamugas reported the consolidated food situation in Bohol based on the data source from DA-Provincial Agricultural Technology Coordinating Office, NFA and Rice Tech, the number of days to consume the rice stocks as of April 15, 2020 are 69 days/ 2.3 months or will last up to June 23, 2020.
Pamugas added that based on the rice inventory as of April 15, 2020, NFA has 68,000 bags at 50 kilograms (kgs.), Marcela Farms (80,000), Bohol Quality (22,000) and other small traders (15,000) that would last for about 18 days while the expected rice yield of the remaining harvestable rice farm are 513,138.8 bags that will be consumed by the Boholanos for about 51.73 days.
He said the 1.3 million Boholanos would consume 9,920 sacks of rice per day.
With regards on the stocks of corn in the province, last March during the harvesting period Bohol had produced 2,723.57 sacks of corn grits that would only last for 7.96 days as the daily consumption of Boholanos of corn is 342 sacks, he said.
Pamugas said that as of now based on the daily monitoring Bohol has enough supply of vegetables and fish.
The Boholano fishermen have sold their fish catch at the different markets and malls in Bohol because they could not sell their products to other provinces due to the implementation of the community quarantine. (Atoy Cosap)