Department of Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel “Manny” Piñol. INQUIRER.net file photo / CATHY MIRANDA
The good days for local rice producers are now over as the buying price for palay (unmilled rice) started to post declines after a series of increases since January this year.
READ: Palay buying price hits 2-year high
According to Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, the farm-gate price of palay in Mindanao has immediately dipped to P17 a kilogram (kg) from an average of P23.04 per kg, and other regions are about to follow suit.
“This is what I fear actually, that the prices of palay will simultaneously go down,” he said in an ambush interview.
The secretary pointed the fast decline in the prices of palay to the continuous arrival of rice imports in the country, which also coincides with the onset of the harvest season.
For this year alone, a total of 1.2 million metric tons (MT) of rice are expected to enter the country as approved by the National Food Authority (NFA). Officials are hoping that flooding the market with subsidized rice would tame prices of the staple in the market, but this has yet to happen eight months since the upward trend began.
Based on the latest price monitoring report from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), prices of regular milled and well-milled rice have reached their highest as of the second week of September.
As for the farm-gate price of palay, it has continuously soared since January until September and eventually breached the P23 per kg mark for the first time –- also the highest buying price ever recorded in the sector.
The latest average price of palay recorded by PSA was at P23.04 per kg, up 17.43 percent from its price last year.
In a phone interview with Agriculture Assistant Secretary for operations Andrew Villacorta, he said that while they are expecting the farm-gate price to decline, it’s difficult to speculate on what price it would finally stabilize.
“The movement of the prices now really depend on the traders,” he said. Citing records from the Department of Agriculture (DA), Villacorta said the buying price for palay has been volatile.
In Cagayan Valley alone -– known to be the country’s rice granary –- prices recorded by the agency were said to be “low today and then high the next.”
Nonetheless, Piñol assured that the NFA would continue to buy palay from rice farmers at P17 per kg to beef up its own inventory, but added that with additional incentives, farmers may be compensated by as much as P20 per kilo of the grain.
The NFA has recently been returned under the supervision of the DA, and the agriculture secretary expressed the need for the agency to “undergo a major reform,” including the movement and reshuffle of certain officials. /jpv