Philippines to stop buying rice for the rest of 2014

Manila

THE Philippines, one of the world's biggest rice importers, is set to end purchases of the grain for this year's requirements, the country's food security chief said on Tuesday.

The state grains procurement agency, the National Food Authority (NFA), has standby authority to buy up to 500,000 tonnes more of the staple grain. That's on top of purchases totalling at least 1.8 million tonnes over the last 10 months, the biggest in four years. "I don't think we will be needing more this year unless we have another devastating typhoon," Francis Pangilinan, Presidential Assistant for Food Security and Agricultural Modernization, told journalists.