THE country’s rice self-sufficiency this year could fall further to 85 percent, the lowest since 2010, due mainly to lower palay production, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Thursday.
The Philippines’s rice self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) fell to an eight-year low in 2018, as more imports flowed into the country to plug the shortfall in domestic production, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The DA estimated total unhusked rice output this year to reach 18.48 million metric tons (MMT), 3.04 percent lower than last year’s record of 19.06 MMT.
This could be the country’s lowest palay production in three years after hitting 17.627 MMT in 2016, based on historical PSA data.
The DA said the expected full-year palay output translates to about 12.09 MMT of milled rice at a 65.42-percent milling recovery rate.
“If we have to compare our rice adequacy level, we are short of 15 percent. So, only 85 percent of our production this year [supplies domestic requirement],” Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar said in a news briefing on Thursday.
“Our annual rice requirement is estimated at 14.24 million [metric tons],” Dar added.
He disclosed that based on the data gathered by the DA from the Bureaus of Plant Industry and Customs (BOC), the country’s total rice imports this year could reach 3.72 MMT. The volume represents 26 percent of the country’s total rice requirement. Due to higher imports, the country is projected to have an ending stock of about 4.41 MMT, Dar added.
The country has imported nearly 3 MMT of rice from January to October, 1.888 MMT of which arrived in the Philippines under the liberalized trade regime, according to BOC data.
The latest report from the PSA indicated that the country’s palay output from January to September declined by nearly 5 percent to 11.32 MMT from 11.909 MMT recorded in the same period of last year due to the substantial reduction in harvested area and insufficient water supply.
In a previous report, the PSA said the rice SSR of the Philippines fell to 86.17 percent last year, from 93.44 percent recorded in 2017. “This means that 86.17 percent of the total supply of rice was sourced from the domestic production.”
The PSA said rice SSR declined last year as domestic output shrank while the supply of imports went up.
The PSA defines SSR as “the magnitude of production in relation to domestic utilization.” The SSR shows the extent to which a country’s supply of commodities is derived from its own domestic production.