Republic Act No. 663

Also known as: An Act To Develop and Improve the Rice and Corn Industries, To Stabilize the Price of Rice and To Promote the Social and Economic Conditions of the People Engaged in the Production of These Staple Foods — the long title · The NARIC revival act of 1951 — the descriptive styling · The 1951 NARIC charter — the charter styling · RA 663 — the statutory abbreviation

Government

Definition

Republic Act No. 663 — long title “AN ACT TO DEVELOP AND IMPROVE THE RICE AND CORN INDUSTRIES, TO STABILIZE THE PRICE OF RICE AND TO PROMOTE THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE PEOPLE ENGAGED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THESE STAPLE FOODS,” approved on June 16, 1951 — is the statute by which Congress re-created the National Rice and Corn Corporation (NARIC) as a fully government-owned corporation after President Quirino’s Executive Order No. 350 had dissolved it into the Price Stabilization Corporation the year before. (LawPhil — RA 663) Section 1 created the body outright: “there is hereby created a corporation which shall be governed by the provisions of this Act, to be known as the NATIONAL RICE AND CORN CORPORATION,” capitalized at “twenty million pesos divided into two hundred thousand shares of stock of the par value of one hundred pesos each,” subscribed by the Government with the voting rights vested in the President. (LawPhil — RA 663) The Supreme Court’s 2024 recital of the lineage states the episode plainly: “But just a year after its dissolution, NARIC got resurrected in 1951 as a ‘government fully owned corporation’ via Republic Act No. 663.” (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)

The Act armed the corporation as the state’s merchant in the two staples — empowered “To buy, sell, import, export, deal in, barter, exchange and handle in every other manner, rice and corn,” to own transport, elevators, mills, warehouses, and factories, to lend to the rice and corn industries, to run demonstration farms, and to exercise eminent domain — with its imports of rice, corn, fertilizers, and lime exempted from import duty. (LawPhil — RA 663) Section 10 dissolved the prior, merged corporation and vested its properties back from PRISCO at net book value; Section 11 appropriated the capital in tranches of ₱10 million on approval and ₱5 million each by July 1, 1952 and July 1, 1953. (LawPhil — RA 663, LawPhil — EO 350) The corporation the Act built lasted eleven years, until Republic Act No. 3452 abolished it into the Rice and Corn Administration on June 14, 1962. (LawPhil — RA 3452)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (title search verified empty this session)
Wikidata	N/A — entity search returns no item for the Act (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — the data endpoint returns an empty resource for the Act (verified this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — LC authorities unreachable this session
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	rice (c_6599) — the staple the Act’s corporation traded; no RA 663-specific concept verified
Google Scholar	Republic Act 663 June 16 1951 National Rice and Corn Corporation NARIC revival PRISCO twenty million pesos rice corn price stabilization EO 350 1950 RA 3452 Rice and Corn Administration 1962
ConceptNet	N/A (ConceptNet API unreachable this session)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

An Act To Develop and Improve the Rice and Corn Industries, To Stabilize the Price of Rice and To Promote the Social and Economic Conditions of the People Engaged in the Production of These Staple Foods — the long title
The NARIC revival act of 1951 — the descriptive styling
The 1951 NARIC charter — the charter styling
RA 663 — the statutory abbreviation

Examples and Analogies

A corporation resurrected by statute: EO 350 of October 1950 dissolved NARIC into PRISCO wholesale — “personnel, records, properties, equipment, assets, rights, choses in action, obligations, liabilities, and contracts” — and Congress brought it back within a year, reclaiming the estate at net book value. (LawPhil — EO 350, LawPhil — RA 663)
A state merchant’s toolkit: the Act’s powers run from trading in every form to owning mills and warehouses, financing producers, running demonstration farms with fertilizer trials, and taking land by eminent domain in the Republic’s name — the trading corporation as development agency. (LawPhil — RA 663)
Public ownership by charter: every share subscribed by the Government, the vote exercised by the President or his designees, a five-member board appointed with Commission on Appointments consent — control built into the capital structure rather than imposed by regulation. (LawPhil — RA 663)
Verified statutory data:
Approval: June 16, 1951, under the Quirino administration; purposes — develop and improve the rice and corn industries in all their phases, stabilize prices, promote producers’ social and economic conditions (LawPhil — RA 663, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)
Capital (Sec. 7): twenty million pesos in two hundred thousand ₱100-par shares, government-subscribed save such shares as must be sold to directors; voting rights in the President (LawPhil — RA 663)
Board (Sec. 9): five directors appointed with Commission on Appointments consent; the President designates the Chairman; staggered initial terms; three a quorum (LawPhil — RA 663)
Succession (Sec. 10): prior corporation dissolved; properties, assets, liabilities, and contracts vested in the new corporation at net book value credited as full payment for shares (LawPhil — RA 663)
Appropriation (Sec. 11): up to ₱20 million from the Treasury — ₱10 million on approval, ₱5 million by July 1, 1952, ₱5 million by July 1, 1953 (LawPhil — RA 663)
End: RA 3452, June 14, 1962 — “The National Rice and Corn Corporation is hereby abolished and all its assets, liabilities, functions, powers which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act, and all personnel are transferred to the Administration” (LawPhil — RA 3452)

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying the Philippine Food-Agency Lineage

RA 663 is the middle link in the chain this wiki traces to the National Food Authority — NARIC (1936) to the re-created NARIC (1951) to the Rice and Corn Administration (1962) to the National Grains Authority (1972) to the NFA (1981) — the instruments the Supreme Court’s 2024 recital strings together. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472, LawPhil — RA 3452)

2. Citing the Corporation’s Legal Basis, 1951–1962

Any question of what the post-1950 NARIC legally was — capital, board, trading and lending powers, duty exemptions — resolves to this Act, cited by section; the corporation’s fuller record is documented in this wiki’s National Rice and Corn Corporation entry. (LawPhil — RA 663)

3. Tracing the Postwar Reorganization Contest

The Act is the legislative answer to an executive order: EO 350 dissolved NARIC under the reorganization authority of RA 422, and Congress reversed the dissolution by statute within a year. (LawPhil — EO 350, LawPhil — RA 663)

4. Administering Staple Prices

The Act’s purposes — stabilizing the prices of rice and corn while promoting producers’ welfare, per the Supreme Court’s recital — made NARIC the statutory operator of administered grain prices, the design its successor agencies repeated for four decades. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472, LawPhil — RA 663)

Strategies

Reverse the executive order by statute: Congress did not amend EO 350; it created a new corporation, dissolved the merged body, and reverted the estate — the strongest legislative answer available. (LawPhil — RA 663, LawPhil — EO 350)
Transfer the estate, never liquidate it: Section 10 moved the defunct corporation’s properties at net book value into the new body, preserving mills, warehouses, and rolling stock through the change of personality. (LawPhil — RA 663)
Capitalize from the treasury, control by the vote: full government subscription with the vote in the President made public control structural, while Commission on Appointments consent kept the board answerable to the Senate. (LawPhil — RA 663)
Pair trading with development: loans, demonstration farms, fertilizer distribution, and research were written beside the trading powers — production-side instruments intended to make the trading side unnecessary. (LawPhil — RA 663)

Security and Safety Measures

Food-supply security as founding purpose: the corporation existed because “the serious shortage of rice and imminent danger of inflation of prices” had threatened the Commonwealth at its birth — the emergency RA 663’s drafters revived the corporation to answer again in the rice-short 1950s. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)
Duty-free importation for supply: the import-duty exemption on rice, corn, fertilizers, and lime was the fiscal instrument of quick grain movement in crisis. (LawPhil — RA 663)
Presidential control of the corporate vote: government shares voted by the President and directors appointed with Commission on Appointments consent placed the state’s merchant under elected authority. (LawPhil — RA 663)
Eminent domain only after purchase fails: the taking power was conditioned on failure to buy at a reasonable price — a safeguard for private holders written into the charter itself. (LawPhil — RA 663)
For researchers: the approval date is June 16, 1951, per the statute’s own Approved line, not 1952; and the Act creates a new corporation rather than renaming one — “National Rice and Corn Corporation” had been the name since 1936, as this wiki’s National Rice and Corn Corporation entry records. (LawPhil — RA 663, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)

Historical Context

NARIC had been born in the rice crisis of the Commonwealth’s first year — a subsidiary of the National Development Company, “started operation in 1936,” designated a relief organization importing rice free of duty under Proclamation No. 58 amid shortage and price manipulation, per the Supreme Court’s 2024 recital. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472) The postwar state reorganized it twice in five years: EO 93 of 1947 cut it loose from the NDC, and EO 350 of October 1950 dissolved it into PRISCO with the other rehabilitation bodies. (LawPhil — EO 350)

Congress reversed the dissolution within the year. RA 663 of June 16, 1951 re-created the corporation, pulled its properties back from PRISCO, and capitalized it at ₱20 million in government-subscribed stock. (LawPhil — RA 663) The re-created NARIC ran the rice-short 1950s until RA 3452 of June 14, 1962 abolished it into the Rice and Corn Administration; the lineage then passed through the Rice and Corn Board to the National Grains Authority created by PD 4 in 1972 and the National Food Authority renamed by PD 1770 in 1981 — with RA 663 the statute that kept the line alive through the 1950s. (LawPhil — RA 3452, LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)

Challenges and Controversies

Dissolved by Order, Revived by Statute

The 1950–1951 sequence is a constitutional argument in institutional form: the President dissolved a government corporation by executive order under RA 422, and the following Congress brought it back by statute and reclaimed the assets from PRISCO — the elected branches contesting, within a single year, whether the state should trade in grain through a corporation at all. (LawPhil — EO 350, LawPhil — RA 663)

State Trading in the Political Commodity

The Act’s powers — to “buy, sell, import, export, deal in, barter, exchange and handle in every other manner” the staples, alongside mills, lending, and eminent domain — made NARIC the state’s merchant in the country’s most political commodity; the design’s beneficiaries and costs were debated from the beginning, and the argument ran on through the Rice and Corn Administration and the National Food Authority that inherited the estate RA 663 assembled. (LawPhil — RA 663, LawPhil — RA 3452)

A Charter Without Administrators

RA 663 is documented almost entirely through its own text and the instruments around it — EO 350, RA 3452, and the Supreme Court’s recital; its administrators, trading volumes, and year-by-year operations between 1951 and 1962 remain to be reconstructed from primary records. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 261472)