Importation needed to solve Philippines' rice shortage

The Department of Agriculture said yesterday it is bent on importing rice to solve a shortage despite President Benigno Simeon Aquino III’s order to stop it, a report of the Philippine News Agency said. “We need to import rice badly because the grain output slid by 10.24 percent for the first semester,” Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala told reporters at the DA Central Office in Quezon City. Alcala said he is worried because if the wet cropping season does not produce much of the staple, the country may have a shortage and need new importations. The DA chief said the harvest was down to 6.62 million metric tons (MTs), down by 750,000 MTs from the output of 7.37 million MTs for the first semester of 2009. He admitted that unless the weather becomes kinder and if the intervention measures set in motion by the DA will not suffice, the country will have to import rice anew. However, he stressed the volume would not be in the vicinity of the 2.45 million MTs imported by the previous administration. The Philippines did not import rice in 1991, 1992, and 1994 but foreign purchases escalated from 2001 onwards. Alcala stressed El Niño was the culprit and explained the prolonged dry season was bad for rice, which is dependent on adequate rainfall and irrigation water to increase yield.