Agriculture Secretary Tiu Laurel Jr. did not see the price of rice to drop by midyear despite the expected harvest and end of El Nino phenomenon.

During the Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon public briefing, Laurel said that "it’s very hard to make estimates" of the price of rice in the coming months due to the existing rice export ban in India.

"The problem in the rice industry of the world, while the price of rice in the world market decreases a little, India still has an export ban. So, until this export ban is lifted, I think prices should not drop considerably," he said.

"Although we have our ongoing harvest season, our rice traders and people in the rice business still acquire the rice at a high price, as of the moment. So, I don't expect that the price of rice will immediately drop until June or July this year," he added.

Laurel said based on the estimate of the Philippine Statistics Authority, "the supply of rice for the first quarter will increase to 1.1% compared to last year."

"The total production should reach about 4.78 million metric tons because of the weather, there seems to be an incremental increase in production," he said.

Laurel expressed belief that because of this the volume of rice that needs to be imported in the Philippines for this year will not reach four million tons or more than the imports of previous years.

"If you may recall, by 2022 the import statistics is 3.8 million; last year actually it went down to 3.5 million metric tons. So, I think?hopefully we will not reach four million metric tons this year since production seems to be okay even with El Nino," he said. Robina Asido/DMS