Import Authority For Rice Traders Offered Next Week.

RICE TRADERS seeking a permit to ship in remaining stocks from abroad under a trade access scheme may apply with the National Food Authority starting next week, an official said on Friday.

"We will be accepting Letters of Intent (LoI) from traders for 187,000 MT (metric tons) of rice under the MAV (minimum access volume) starting April 18," Gilberto E. Lauengco, special assistant to National Food Authority Administrator Angelito T. Banayo and concurrent bidding and awards committee cochairman, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Applications will be accepted, he added, until the total volume is used up.

Under the program, a trader can bring in as much as 20,000 MT of the offered volume.

The total MAV of 350,000 MT is in addition to the NFA Council-approved imports totalling 860,000 MT that are distributed between the grains agency and the private sector.

A little over three-fourths or 660,000 MT of the government-approved volume will be brought in by private traders duty free, with a service fee of at least P2 per kilogram.

The MAV on rice is a special quantitative restriction granted by the World Trade Organization (WTO) over pleas from the government to protect and prepare local rice farmers from an eventual commitment to liberalize agricultural trade.

Imported rice under the MAV is charged 40% tariff, while the volume in excess of the quota will be slapped with a 50% tariff, as required under WTO rules.

"The last portion of the MAV we are offering now can be sourced from any country," Mr. Lauengco noted, explaining that the first MAV allocation of 163,000 MT offered last Jan. 10 was governed by a country-specific quota (CSQ).

The CSQ program this year allowed traders to import at most 5,000 MT of rice from four countries, namely, Thailand, China, India, and Australia.

The first MAV offering, however, had a low participation.

"Only 11 companies submitted LoI’s for the CSQ program, and so far, we have granted import rights to only three of them, because the others have problems with their submitted documents, which we are still resolving to this day," Mr. Lauengco said.

Total volume from qualified importers reached about 11,000 MT.

The MAV is bound to expire in June 2012, although the Agriculture department has been mulling to seek a three-year extension to give elbow room for farmers to achieve rice self-sufficiency by 2013.

Source : bworldonline.com