Rice inventory continues to rise

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s rice inventory has maintained its upward trend as it went up by 32 percent in July, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said.

Latest data from the PSA showed that total rice inventory as of July stood at 2.62 million metric tons (MT), 32 percent higher than last year’s volume stock of 1.99 million MT.

This also inched up by one percent from the previous month’s volume stock of 2.59 million MT.

The PSA did not specify the number of days that the stock inventory of Filipinos’ main staple will be sufficient.

But, based on the average daily consumption of Filipinos of 32,000 MT, the current inventory is sufficient for 82 days.

Commercial warehouses had almost half of total inventories at 41.9 percent, while households held about 38.4 percent. Supplies from the National Food Authority (NFA) depositories cornered 19.7 percent of the total.

On a monthly basis, stocks in the households and NFA depositories showed decrements of four percent and six percent, respectively, but stocks in commercial warehouses increased 10 percent.

The NFA, meanwhile, continues to improve its inventory following the higher incentives despite plunging farmgate prices.

Latest reports from the NFA grains marketing and operations department showed the grains agency was able to buy 5.77 million bags from its 5.3 million target for January to the first week of August.

NFA palay procurement is still mostly from surplus areas like Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Bulacan, Cagayan, Pampanga, Occidental Mindoro, Tarlac, and North Cotabato.

NFA administrator Judy Dansal said more local farmers are selling palay to NFA because they earn a reasonable amount for their produce with the basic price and additional incentives given by the food agency.

With the additional incentive, an individual farmer can earn as much as P20.40 per kilogram and farmer cooperatives up to P20.70 per kilo.

Data showed that on the average, farmgate price of palay dropped to P17.80 per kilo on the third week of July.

The lowest farmgate price of palay monitored was P14 in Northern Leyte, P15 in Pampanga, and P16 in Aurora, Cavite, Sarangani, Tagum and Compostela Valley.

“We continue to focus on aggressive palay procurement from our local farmers as mandated by the law not only for buffer stocking purposes during calamities and emergencies, but  also to provide a ready market for our farmers’ produce and cushion the impact of the low farm gate price,” Dansal said.