Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. has assured the public that the country’s rice supply is sufficient through the first half of 2024.
“We have enough rice supply, so prices should remain stable through the first half of the year. Our priority now is market stability,” Tiu Laurel said.
He cautioned, however, that prices might remain high through September due to global rice supply concerns stemming from El Niño and the resulting high international prices.
Recent imports and the upcoming harvest, peaking in March and April, will ensure stable prices for the main food staple despite El Niño concerns, he added.
In the first week of February 2024, the Philippines secured a five-year rice supply deal with Vietnam, guaranteeing 1.5 million to two million metric tons annually. India also pledged additional supply despite its import ban on non-basmati rice.
A total of 750,000 metric tons of imported rice arrived in December and January, bolstering local inventory.
“What we need to guard against now are profiteers who may attempt to exploit the situation by using El Nino as excuse to hoard rice supply to push local prices to unreasonably high levels,” Tiu Laurel warned.
He instructed assistant secretary and spokesman Arnel de Mesa to coordinate with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and law enforcement agencies to closely monitor rice price surges.
The Philippine Statistics Authority cited rice as a major risk in the consumer price index (CPI), a tool used to measure inflation.
Economic Planning Undersecretary and national statistician Dennis Mapa suggested that inflation could have been lower without the double-digit increase in rice prices compared to last year, given its weight in the consumer basket.
Mapa explained that since the price base for rice between January and July 2023 was lower, any increase in the price of the staple could be magnified in the inflation data. Headline inflation in January eased to 2.8 percent, its slowest pace since October 2020.
Rice holds an 8.87 percent weight in the CPI basket and an even higher 17.87 percent share in the spending of the bottom 30 percent of income households.