The Negros Occidental provincial government has purchased PHP170.999 million worth of rice supply for distribution to poor and near-poor households using the Local Government Support Fund-Financial Assistance (LGSF-FA) granted by the national government.

Data on Friday showed the procurement covers 251,470 sacks of 10-kilogram rice for the target 125,735 beneficiary households in all 19 municipalities and 12 cities, to be implemented under the Assistance to Indigent Individuals or Families-Food Assistance Rice Distribution Project.

“We have already finished the bidding process for the rice assistance from the Office of the President,” Provincial Administrator Rayfrando Diaz II said in a Facebook post.

Each beneficiary household will receive a 10-kilogram rice allocation for each quarter, in the third and fourth quarters of 2026.

Diaz said the list of beneficiaries came from the Philippine Statistics Authority’s Community-Based Monitoring System, assuring all cities and municipalities that they will receive an equitable share of the food assistance after their respective mayors submit their preferred schedules of distribution.

He added that Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson is requesting city and municipal mayors to submit the list of their constituents who are existing recipients of government rice assistance so they can be excluded from the distribution under the provincial government.

“We will need the list of the beneficiaries who already received rice subsidies using their own LGSF-FA for Food Assistance to avoid duplication of beneficiaries,” Diaz said. (PNA)