SANTO DOMINGO. - The government plans to distribute 100,000 sacks of 100 pounds of subsidized tinted rice to stores every week and admits its scarcity in bodegas.

Industry and Commerce vice minister Jhovanny Leyba said they’ll begin to distribute the grain this week or at the start of the next, and acknowledged that the last distribution of subsidized, non-tinted rice was around 10 days ago, of 127,000 quintals, to sell for 12 pesos the pound.

The official said it was necessary to tint the rice because some merchants try to sell the subsidized rice at normal prices. “When a sack of rice is given to a store there is no way to define if the consumer knows that it’s subsidized rice because it’s of a quality just as the one that’s bought in the competitive market.”

Leyba said the green-colored rice will correct the anomaly. “What it’s sought isn’t for the product to be in all bodegas, but in several bodegas in each poor barrio in the country.”