The Philippines: 500,000 MT rice arriving from India, Taiwan

Nearly 500,000 metric tons of rice from Taiwan and India will arrive beginning this month until February 2024, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Wednesday, Dec. 27. This is in preparation for the possible impact of the El Niño phenomenon on palay production. Meanwhile, a total of 20,000 bags – equivalent to 1,000 MT – delivered before Christmas Day constituted the first batch of the 40,000 bags of rice donated by Taiwan, Navarro said. Another 75,000 MT will arrive from India starting this week until early January, the DA official said. “With the arrival of imported rice and the volume harvested by farmers in recent months, the country will have sufficient supply of the national food staple until the next harvest which starts in March,” Navarro noted. According to Navarro, the country’s daily rice consumption is 36,000 MT per day, or 1.08 million tons monthly. The BSP has aggressively raised interest rates since last year to tame inflation, which affects the purchasing ...