Rice stocks grow 40% in August

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s rice inventory maintained its upward trend, rising by 40 percent in August, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said.

Latest data from the PSA showed that total rice inventory stood at 2.13 million metric tons (MT) as of August,  40.3 percent higher than  the previous year.

However, this is lower by 19 percent from the previous month’s 2.62 million MT.

The PSA did not specify the number of days the stock inventory of Filipinos’ main staple will be sufficient.

But based on the average daily consumption of Filipinos of 32,000 MT, the current inventory is sufficient for 67 days.

Commercial warehouses had almost half of total inventories at 41.2 percent, while households held about 37.1 percent. Supplies from the National Food Authority depositories comprised 21.6 percent of the total.

On a monthly basis, rice stocks inventory in households, commercial warehouses and NFA depositories declined by 21.4 percent, 20 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

NFA’s current stock is about eight million bags of rice, including the four million bags of imported rice, 400,000 bags of local rice and 6.3 million bags of palay (unhusked rice) for milling.

NFA administrator Judy Dansal said NFA’s procurement operations is a year-round activity and that the grains agency is ready to receive palay deliveries from farmers across the country.

Dansal said the volume stock is good for 13 days of national daily consumption requirement which means that NFA is compliant with the provisions of the rice tariffication law.

The law, which was passed early this year, requires NFA to maintain a 15 to 30 day buffer stock of rice based on the daily consumption requirement of 651,860 bags.