As the country approaches the third quarter of the year, the Department of Agriculture (DA) affirmed on Tuesday that there is sufficient supply of rice to meet Filipinos’ daily food needs.
Undersecretary Leo S. Sebastian, who oversees the Department of Agriculture’s Masagana Rice Industry Program (MRIP), predicts that a plentiful harvest during the rice growing season of January to June will result in a six percent rise in production.
“This is based on PhilRice PRISM data of 8.153 MMT (million metric tons) palay production in 2022 to 8.605 MMT palay or 5.6 MMT milled rice in 2023,” he said.
The volume, along with the carryover stock of 1.8M MT (metric tons) milled rice (based on PSA), supplemented by the arrival of 1.8M MT in imports, is sufficient to meet the demand and consumption of 7M MT from January to June, according to Sebastian.
In addition to the forthcoming supply from the new harvest and import shipments in the upcoming months, the stock available by the end of June will be sufficient for more than two months, he said.
Sebastian emphasized that the current price movement is the result of the high cost of production both domestically and internationally, which also drives the price of palay and imported rice, respectively.
“We expect this to stabilize” Sebastian said. (PND)
