National Tobacco Administration issued the following announcement on May 23.
The National Tobacco Administration welcomed the commitment of major tobacco buying firms to buy all the tobacco leaves of farmers in Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley Region, and Abra.
OIC Administrator Roberto R. Bonoan said the commitment personally relayed to him by ULPI, TransManila, Conleaf, and Associated Anglo-American would mean all contracted tobacco growers are assured of reasonable income of their produce in the current crop year.
“We implemented beginning this year a new floor price, higher than the price of all tobacco types for the last two cropping seasons, and based on feedbacks from the buying stations, trading is operation is alive and well, despite the lockdown,” Bonoan said.
According to Bonoan, it helped that the Department of Agriculture approved the request of the agency, and in coordination with the local government units, for the unhampered delivery of tobacco in their respective areas, and movement of NTA staff and trading personnel to the buying stations to receive tobacco from the farmers.
The trading season of cured tobacco in the Ilocos Region officially started on March 5 while the trading in Region 2 started last week of April.
According to the NTA Regulation Department, tobacco acceptances for all buying stations in the two regions have reached 9.97 million kilos, valued at P744.07 million. A big bulk of the acceptances or about 67% are Virginia tobacco with 6.65 million kilos.
Regulation Manager Atty. Rohbert A. Ambros said that the production figure, extracted from the acceptances report of the NTA Branch Offices, is about 23% of the P43.65 million kilos production target this year.
Trading operations will continue until the first week of June for Virginia, July for Burley and August for Native tobacco.
“The figure would have been higher if not for the extended stoppage of operations during the Holy Week and choke points in some areas due to strict implementation of safety protocols,” Bonoan said.
He expects higher rate of acceptance in the coming days, with the implementation of modified General Community Quarantine in Ilocos and other areas where the buying stations are located.
Original source can be found here.
