Palace assures enough rice supply

CEBU, Philippines — President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has assured that the country has sufficient supply of rice that could last "even after the El Ni o phenomenon next year."

The President made the remark during a meeting with the Private Sector Advisory Council and the Philippine Rice Stakeholders Movement (PRISM) at Malaca ang on Tuesday.

The rice situation is manageable and stable. There is enough rice for the Philippines up to and after the El Ni o next year,  Marcos said.

Marcos is also the secretary of the Department of Agriculture. He made the statement days after DA Undersecretary Merceditas Sombillo said at a Palace briefing that the country is planning to import 1.3 million metric tons (MMT) of rice as Marcos expressed concerns over the combined impact of Super Typhoon Egay, the El Ni o phenomenon and Russia s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain initiative on the supply of the grain.

DA and PRISM officials presented to the President on Wednesday the rice supply outlook for the country until the end of 2023. During the meeting, Sombillo said even with the low scenario with the assumption of a maintained level of production, the projected ending stock for 2023 is 1.96 MMT, enough to last for 52 days.

Sombillo added that the ending stock projection based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority presents an even better scenario as the ending stock is projected at 2.12 MMT, which would last for 57 days. Palay harvest season is set to start September until November.

In an interview after the meeting, Rowena del Rosario-Sadicon, the lead convenor of PRISM, also assured the public that there would be enough rice supply until the end of the year.

We don t need to panic for anything else... It s very important that we are one in our objective to be positive on this. We have enough rice,  Del Rosario-Sadicon said.

Sombilla had said they have yet to set the dates of importation but noted there are pending applications for sanitary and phytosanitary certificates.

We will be scheduling the importation. We have already, you know  remember it s in the sanitary, phytosanitary, right. We have already something like 1.3 (MMT) volume of applications that are already pending there,  Sombilla said.

According to the latest report from the DA's Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Operations Center, damage and losses in rice due to typhoons  Egay  and  Falcon  amounted to P1.79 billion, affecting 114,735 hectares and posting production losses of 42,778 MT, or 0.22 percent of the total annual rice production target of 19.76 million MT.  — Philippine Star News Service/FPL (FREEMAN)