RP will import to tackle rice shortage

RP will import to tackle rice shortage

MANILA (Reuter): A rice shortage in the Philippines which sent
prices up will ease as imports from Thailand and other Asian
countries begin to arrive, senior agricultural officials said
yesterday.

A drought that hit the dry season crop forced the Philippines
to import up to 250,000 tons of rice from Thailand, China,
Vietnam, India and Japan. An initial amount of about 30,000
tons has already arrived in Manila's port.

"We can see prices abating by the end of the week," Romeo
David, chief of the National Food Authority (NFA), told a
television station early yesterday. "We are now in very good
shape because the rice has started to arrive."

The NFA is the government agency in charge of maintaining a
national buffer stock equivalent to 90 days of consumption to
prevent a sharp rise in prices.

Prices of rice, staple food of the Philippines' 68 million
people, climbed to as high as 25 pesos (98 U.S. cents) a kg in
some areas after drought sharply trimmed the inventory going into
the seasonally lean third quarter.

Average prices for ordinary rice increased to as much as 14-15
pesos (54-58 cents) a kg in the past few weeks from 12-13 pesos
(47-50 cents) a few months ago.

David said the imported rice would be sold at 10.25 pesos (40
cents) a kg to flush out traders hoarding the staple and
stabilize escalating prices. The rest of the imports would arrive
by the end of August.

But production problems will continue to plague rice output in
coming years because building irrigation facilities and
encouraging the use of more fertilizer among farmers will take
time, officials said.

"We really need big irrigation systems," Agriculture
Undersecretary Manuel Lantin said on the same television
program. "Over the last 10 years, the investment in irrigation
systems is insufficient."

The government plans to spend up to 24 billion pesos ($940
million) over the next four years on irrigation networks, market
roads and milling facilities to raise average yields to nearly 10
tons of rice per hectare from the current 3.5 to four tons per
hectare.

Latin said the agriculture department is also worried that the
rate at which farmers use fertilizer remains "very low".

Agriculture officials are worried that earlier forecasts of a
harvest of two million tons of unmilled rice in the third quarter
may fall short, forcing the government to lower its prediction of
a harvest of 11 million tons in calendar 1995.

"If the rain in some areas is again below normal, the rice
crop for the third and fourth quarter this year may again be
affected," a rice dealer said.

Philippine unmilled rice production in the first half of 1995
slipped to about 4.29 million tons from 4.87 million in the same
period in 1994.

Production in the second half of this year is forecast to
reach 6.7 million tons, the bulk of which will be harvested in
the last quarter.