Palay prices continue to go down

The price of palay continued to go down at the latter part of September, with farmers still being forced to sell their yield at a loss, a data from Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.

As of the second week of September, farm-gate prices of palay is still on a downtrend, falling by 30.1 percent yearon-year from 123.14 per kilogram (kg) to 116.18/kg. This is a decrease of 0.6 percent week-on-week from the price level of 116.28/kg.

In some parts of Metro Manila, the price of palay dipped to as low as 110/kg during the period. The same is true with Central Luzon.

This means that during this period, farmers were forced to sell their yield at a loss since the average cost of producing palay is 112/kg, mainly because of higher fuel cost and lack of subsidy from the government.

Senator Francis Pangilinan acknowledged that the decline in the price of palay was due to the implementation of Rice Tariffication Law or RA 11203, which opened up the country to the non-stop entry of cheaper, imported rice.

On Wednesday, Pangilinan insisted that the country’s rice farmers need immediate cash assistance as they deal with the impact of a liberalized rice industry.

According to him, farmers should get at least 1700 million in cash aid from the rice tariff collection in excess of the 110 billion collected this year.

Meanwhile, the average wholesale price of well milled rice also continued to go down. As of the second week of September, it fell by 16.8 percent to 138.43/kg from the previous year's level of 146.18/ kg. From the previous week, the decrease was only minimal at 0.4 percent.

At the retail trade, however, the average price of well milled rice increase to 142.27/kg or by 0.2 percent from its level of 142.26/kg a week ago. Year-on-year, it went down by 14.2 percent from the price level of 149.27/kg.

As for the average wholesale price of regular milled rice, it went down by 21.2 percent from previous year's level of 143.49 to 134.29/kg. Compared to the previous week's level of P34.40, this was a slight decline of 0.3 percent.

There was also a steep drop in the year-on-year retail price of regular milled rice. At the average, the price for this type of rice dropped by 17.8 percent from 145.96/kg during the same period last year to 137.79/kg. This was a slight decline from last week's price level of 137.83/kg.

The decline in retail prices was the result of influx of imported rice in the local market.

From January to July, imported rice that entered the country reached to 2.4 million metric tons (MT). This is equivalent to 17 percent of the country’s rice consumption for the entire 2019, according to Federation of Free Farmers (FFF).

Two weeks ago, Agriculture Secretary William Dar committed to study the possibility of raising tariffs on imported rice as one of the measures to control the excessive flow of imported rice.