THE projected increase in palay production in the first quarter of 2016 forced the government to reassess the volume of imported rice it will buy next year to beef up the National Food Authority’s buffer stock.
Economic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Director General Arsenio M. Balisacan said data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that the impact of El Niño and Typhoon Lando (international code name Koppu) on palay production were not as bad as expected.
“We have new data from the PSA showing that the expected production for this quarter and the first semester of next year is likely going to be more favorable than expected,” Balisacan said on the sidelines of the GDP news conference on Thursday.
The government said 500,000 metric tons (MT) of imported rice will arrive in the first quarter of 2016.
However, the prolonged dry spell and the onslaught of Lando in the country’s rice bowl forced the El Niño task force to recommend additional rice imports.
Before the onslaught of Lando, the task force, headed by the Neda, recommended the importation of an additional 1 million metric tons (MMT) in the second quarter of 2016.
However, the typhoon and its destruction of rice lands in Central Luzon prompted the task force to again increase its recommendation to 1.3 MMT on top of the 500,000 MT expected to arrive next quarter.
The estimates were made without the latest data from the PSA. Based on farmer’s planting intentions, paddy rice production in January to March 2016 is projected to increase by 0.31 percent
to 4.38 MMT.
PSA data said the increase will be due to the 1.15-percent expansion in harvest area. However, due to El Niño, yield per hectare may decrease to 3.77 MT.
“What we have to worry about is the second quarter of next year but as I said, [the] new numbers that the PSA have generated, the result is based on recent surveys, the expected production in the first half of the year is better than what we initially estimated,” Balisacan said.
Meanwhile, Balisacan also said the task force also reduced its estimate of the budget to finance the government’s El Niño-related interventions.
Initially, the task force estimated that the government would need around P23 billion to mitigate the ill effects of El Niño.
However, with the latest data from the state weather bureau, the task force slashed the budget to around P21 billion.
“The data that we had, that was before Lando, [showed that] it was really going to start getting bad in the last quarter, but it turned out that after Lando, we had more rain filling up the dams, so more water than what we initially expected. Obviously that would reduce the cost of interventions,” Balisacan said.
Initially, the task force said around P2.9 billion will be needed to finance cash-for-work programs and P7.3 billion in the first semester of next year.
Balisacan also said that a budget of P1.3 billion was initially earmarked for the remaining months of 2015 and P1.9 billion for the first semester of 2016 by the Department of Social Welfare and Development for food stamps.