PH to end 2024 with 3.64M MT rice stock —DA

The Philippines is expected to end 2024 with a higher rice stock inventory despite challenges brought by El Niño and La Niña phenomena, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said Tuesday.

“At the end of the year, we are seeing, the latest… it could be 3.64 million metric tons (MT). Almost equivalent to 95 days,” DA Assistant Secretary for Operations U-Nichols Manalo said at the Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas forum in Quezon City.

The end-2024 rice stock inventory is higher than the 1.9 million MT rice stocks as of December 2023.

Meanwhile, as of May this year, the country’s total rice stocks stood at 2.08 million MT, up 10.3% year-on-year. 

Of last month’s rice stocks, 41.6% were held by households, 55.1% by commercial, and the remaining 3.3% by the National Food Authority.

The country’s second quarter palay production, however, is estimated to decrease to 3.89 million MT from 4.25 million MT actual production in the same period last year, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

As of the first quarter, PSA data showed that palay output declined by 1.96% to 4.69 million MT from 4.78 million MT in the same period last year, due to El Niño.

Manalo said the DA is sticking to its 20.44 million MT palay harvest goal for this year.

He said that the agency will “come up with a climate-smart map of rice areas” to be affected by a “more destructive” La Niña.

“The strategy of the government for La Niña will be, as much as possible, a location-specific evaluation,” Manalo said, adding that the same approach was used in preparation for El Niño.

As of June 6, total damage and losses due to El Niño stood at P9.89 billion, equivalent to 441,801 MT of volume damaged.

The higher expected rice stock could also be attributed to the foreseen higher importation of the Philippines for this year due to the reduction of import tariff rates to 15% until 2028.

The United States Department of Agriculture, in its June 2024 grains report, is estimating that the country will be importing 4.6 million MT this year.

DA Assistant Secretary and spokesperson Arnel de Mesa said that the Philippines has so far imported 2.2 million MT as of early June this year. —VAL, GMA Integrated News