Rice prices seen stabilizing

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan—Prices of rice have begun to normalize in Pangasinan and neighboring provinces, said an official of a farmers’ group here.

Rosendo So, chair of the party-list group Abono, said the price of a kilogram of commercial rice has leveled to P32 on Sunday, down from the P35 a kg selling price last month.

“This is because farmers in Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija have already harvested their crops,” said So on telephone. “Then the weather has been good so far, allowing farmers to dry their palay.”

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala, in a visit here last week, said prices of commercial rice had slightly gone down after farmers in rice-producing provinces started harvesting their crops.

He said rice prices increased due to the disruption of the delivery of middle-priced rice supply to traders because of the continuous rains.

Commercial rice shot up from P32 a kg to P35 a kg.

So, a rice trader, said rice prices would continue to stabilize until December as long as farmers continued to harvest and dry their palay.

He said the National Food Authority (NFA) had been buying palay from farmers at P17.50 a kg.

“Next year, we might import only about 350,000 metric tons of rice as NFA buffer stock,” So said.

“This is a lot lower than the amount of rice we imported in 2010, which was about 2 million metric tons,” he said. Gabriel Cardinoza, Inquirer Northern Luzon