RICE IMPORTS fell 46% year on year to 641,000 metric tons (MT) in the year to date ending March 13, which industry representatives attributed to trader reluctance to import in the face of a maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) scheme.
Agriculture Assistant Secretary Arnel V. de Mesa said at a briefing that 96,260 MT of the shipments arrived in March, 267,114 in February, and 277,540 in January.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) said the equivalent year-earlier volumes are 429,260 MT in January 2024, 341,585 in February 2024, and 415,764 in March 2024.
Federation of Free Farmers Director Raul Q. Montemayor said the imposition of the MSRP in January may have caused the significant decline in imports.
The DA first implemented the MSRP for imported rice on Jan. 20, setting it initially at P58 per kilo. It has since been lowered to P52 on Feb. 15, and to P49 on March 1.
The DA over the weekend said if the current trend in world rice prices persists and the peso remains strong, “we might lower the MSRP for imported rice to around P45 per kilo by March 31.”
“Importers may be hedging and adopting a wait and see stance because of the successive decline in the MSRP,” Mr. Montemayor said.
“There could also still be residual stocks from 2024 imports,” he added.
He said the declaration of a food security emergency could have also spooked importers because under a 2024 anti-agricultural economic sabotage law, “the government can embargo stocks on the mere suspicion of smuggling, hoarding or profiteering.”
Danilo V. Fausto, president of the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food, said via Viber:
“While rice imports might have decreased, this is still not a welcome development since first quarter is rice harvest season.”
“Any imports during this time will affect palay farmgate prices to the detriment of the rice farmers,” he added.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) recently reported that a kilo of regular-milled rice fetched P46.30 on average at retail in early March, a period it calls the first phase of March, against the last reading of P47.19 a little past mid-February.
“Similarly, this was lower relative to its price level in the first phase of February 2025 at P47.77 per kilogram,” it added.
The farmgate price of palay, or unmilled rice, fell 18.9% year on year in February to an average of P20.29 per kilogram, after rice imports hit record levels last year.
Month on month, the palay farmgate price fell 1.9%, the PSA reported.
Inflation eased to 2.1% in February from 2.9% in January as rice inflation dropped to 4.9%, the sharpest decline since April 2020.
The DA in January said it was expecting the palay harvest to exceed 20 million MT (MMT) this year.
In 2024, rice imports hit a record 4.68 MMT, against 3.6 MMT a year earlier. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza