PSA lowers rice production forecast for 2nd quarter

Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) was forced to lower its second quarter forecast for the country’s rice output due to continuous rainfall, insufficient water supply in some areas, and pest infestation in the past three months.

Palay production from April to June is now seen to hit 4.10 million metric tons (MT), lower than the previous forecast of 4.10 million MT.

“The expected decline in palay production may be due to the reduction of yield brought about by the effect of continuous rainfall during the vegetative and reproductive stages of the crops,” PSA said on Tuesday.

“In some provinces, this was also affected by insufficient water supply and incidence of pests,” it added.

Albeit lower by 0.6 percent, target palay production of 4.10 million MT will still be 10.5 percent higher than the output of 3.71 million MT recorded in the same period last year.

This time, harvest area may also increase by 0.02 percent from 0.95 million hectares level but yield per hectare may decrease from 4.35 MT to 4.32 MT.

According to PSA, the probable reduction in palay production may be particularly attributed to unfilled grains resulting from occurrence of rains during vegetative and reproductive stages of crop in Tarlac, Leyte, and Southern Leyte.

There was also insufficient water supply in irrigated farms in Aurora, Zambales, Batangas, Laguna, and Rizal during reproductive stage.

Rat infestation was also recorded in South Cotabato, Agusan del Sur and Surigao del Sur as well as incidence of rice black bugs and stemborers in some provinces.

Meanwhile, about 643.61 thousand hectares of the updated standing crop have been harvested so far.

“As to the planting intentions of farmers for the July to September, 2017 crop, around 168.91 thousand hectares or 21.30 percent of these have been actually planted,” PSA noted.

“Of the 474.11 thousand hectares standing palay crop, 34.2 percent were at vegetative stage; 27.3 percent, at reproductive stage and 38.5 percent, at maturing stage,” it added.

As of now, state-run grains agency National Food Authority (NFA) is gearing up for the importation of 250,000 of grains to fill the country's declining buffer stock.

NFA spokesperson Marietta Ablaza said earlier that the agency is expecting the arrival of 250,000 metric tons (MT) of imported rice by July, just in time for the coming lean months that will start next month and will last until September.

The private sector-led importation of rice will now be done in tranches, with at least 30 percent of the volume of import quotas expected to arrive between July 31 and September this year. The balance must arrive between December, 2017 and February, 2018.

Under the government to private (G2P) importation, the NFA Council, as per recommendation of the National Food Security Committee (NFSC) and Imports Committee, shall divide the 250,000 metric tons (MT) import authority into several tranches of arrival and will be putting a cap on each lot, to ensure competition and fair trade.