THE United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) revised upward anew its total rice import forecast for the Philippines this year to a record level of 3.4 million metric tons (MMT), from an earlier estimate of 3.2 MMT.
In its monthly global grain report, the USDA increased its total rice import forecast for the Philippines this year by 200,000 MT due to “large purchases from Vietnam.”
The new import forecast for the Philippines, the world’s second-largest buyer of rice, is 15.25 percent higher than the 2.95 MMT of rice it imported last year, based on USDA data.
Historical USDA data showed that if the 3.4 MMT rice import forecast materializes this year, then it would be the first time in the Philippines’s history that its rice imports breached the 3-MMT level.
Likewise, the USDA hiked its rice import forecast for the Philippines next year to 3.3 MMT from an earlier estimate of 3.1 MMT on the back of a projected “smaller” domestic staple production.
The USDA projected that Philippine rice output for 2023 would decline to 12.41 MMT from this year’s estimated volume of 12.54 MMT as yield falls to 4.1 MT per hectare from 4.15 MT per hectare.
The Philippines’s rice imports in January to August have reached MMT and are poised to surpass the 2.777 MMT it imported in 2021. (Related story: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2022/09/08/phl-rice-imports-jump-by-64-in-january-august/)
The latest data from the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) showed that the country’s rice imports during the 8-month period was about 64 percent higher than the 1.66 MMT recorded a year ago.
Imported rice arrivals in August alone rose by more than 50 percent year-on-year to 380,244.5 MT from 228,353.97 MT.
BPI data indicated that 5,920 MT of rice entered the country on September 1, bringing to 2.725 MMT the total rice import volume from January 1 to September 1.
The agency said 137 eligible traders and importers brought in rice from Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Bulk of the country’s rice imports or about 2.226 MMT came from Vietnam, followed by Myanmar’s 201,799.28 MT, based on BPI data.
The country’s rice imports from Thailand as of September 1 reached 139,651.375 MT while those from Pakistan reached 139,095.675 MT.
Image credits: Andre Malerba/Bloomberg