The country’s rice inventory significantly declined a quarter in December, but the government assured sufficient supply that will last until the next harvest season.

A report from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that the rice stock dropped 25 percent to 1.90 million metric tons (MT) from 2.53 MT recorded in the same period in 2022.

The latest reading is slightly lower by 4.2 percent than the November 2023 stock of 1.98 million MT.

Rice supplies from the National Food Authority (NFA), which had a share of three percent in the total inventories, declined by 54.4 percent compared to the same period in 2022.

It was followed by the household sector, down by 33.2 percent, and the commercial sector, down by 8.7 percent. They had a share of 52.1 percent and 44.9 percent of the total inventories, respectively.

Month-on-month, decreases were seen in all rice inventories with stocks from the commercial sector declining by 5.5 percent, NFA depositories by 5.1 percent, and the household sector by 3.0 percent.

The Department of Agriculture said in December last year that the country has enough supply of rice targeted to last until March or April backed by imports from Vietnam and India, among others.

Meanwhile, supplies of corn in December 2023 increased twofold to 685.89 thousand MT, up by 51.1 percent from the 545.03 MT in the same period of 2022.

However, on a monthly basis, this marked a 12 percent downtrend from the 779.46 MT recorded in November 2023.

Supplies in the commercial and household sectors all saw an improvement of 51.4 percent and 49.4 percent, respectively, compared to their supplies in the same period of 2022.

The PSA noted, however, that the supplies in the commercial sector declined by 17.4 percent month-on-month, while those in the household sector grew by 28.1 percent.

Most of the corn stocks came from the commercial sector while the remaining 17.2 percent were from the households.