The latest Rice Outlook published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted the Philippines as the top importing country for rice in 2024, amid a projected decline in global rice importation.
The USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) reported that the Philippines may surpass the importation of bigger economies like China, Indonesia, the European Union, Nigeria, and Iraq at an estimated 3.8 million metric tons (MT) rice imports in 2024.
The agency revealed that the projected global decline for the year will be due to import cuts from Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, North Korea, Singapore, Tanzania, Togo, and Vietnam.
Imports on a country basis are also projected to increase in Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, South Korea, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Locally, the Department of Agriculture (DA) expects the arrival of about 500,000 metric tons of imported rice until February 2024. The volume is part of rice imports procured in 2023.
About 100,000 MT of rice has arrived to beef up the stockpiling efforts of the government in preparation for El Niño.
With the arrival of imported rice and the volume harvested by farmers in recent months, the DA said the country will have sufficient supply of the national food staple until the next harvest, which starts in March.
National rice consumption is around 36,000 metric tons per day, or around 1.08 million tons per month.
Based on the Philippines Statistics Agency (PSA) latest Rice and Corn Stocks Inventory releases Friday (Jan. 19), total rice stocks inventory was estimated at 1.9 million MT as of Dec. 1, 2023, down by 25.2 percent from the 2.53 million MT inventory in the same period in 2022.
Month-on-month, Philippine rice stocks inventory recorded a decrease of 4.2 percent in December 2023 from the previous month’s inventory of 1.98 million metric tons.
For the month of December 2023, rice stocks inventories in all sectors registered annual declines of 54.4 percent in National Food Authority’s (NFA) depositories, 33.2 percent in the household sector, and 8.7 percent in the commercial sector relative to their corresponding levels in the same period of 2022.
In comparison to the November 2023 rice stocks levels, month-on-month decreases were noted in rice stocks inventories in the commercial sector by 5.5 percent, NFA depositories by 5.1 percent, and in the household sector by 3.0 percent.
Of the total rice stocks in December, 52.1 percent were from the households, 44.9 percent were from the commercial sector, and 3.0 percent were from NFA depositories.