April 24, 2007

 

Philippines' NFA tenders corn imports for May

 

 

The state-run National Food Authority (NFA) will bid out a contract to import 80,000 metric tonnes (MT) of corn on May 17 to complete the total shipments of 200,000 MT needed to fill the Philippine corn supply gap for the year.

 

NFA Deputy Administrator Ludivico Jarina said the government would purchase its last batch of corn imports before June to meet a critical supply shortage as main corn harvest is expected to start in July.

 

Only about 120,000 MT of corn imports of the total 200,000 MT were pledged during   bidding on April 11 at the NFA office in Quezon City.

 

Toepfer bagged the contract to import 60,000 MT while Cargill won the balance. Other qualified bidders were Bunge, Romar Commodities, Louis Dreyfuss  and Paritas.

 

Toepfer and Cargill, both trading companies, plan to obtain the corn supply from an Argentina.

 

The Department of Agriculture has allowed up to 400,000 MT of corn imports this year in two separate batches of 200,000 MT each.

 

The imports are based on reports of a production shortfall of 1.8 million MT this year.

 

The government has committed to shoulder the import duties to make domestic corn prices competitive.

 

The feed milling sector projects yellow corn production this year will reach 3.88 million tonnes, or around 60 percent of total corn output, against the feeds requirement of about 5.11 million metric tonnes.

 

With post-harvest losses of around 15 percent, the available yellow corn for feeds will reach around 3.3 million MT, or a shortfall of 1.8 million MT, said Ric Pinca, executive director of Philippine Association of Feed Millers Inc.