Friday, April 11, 2008 Soaring rice prices blamed on high production costs
KORONADAL CITY -- The Department of Agriculture (DA) in Central Mindanao attributed the rising cost of rice in the local markets to high production costs and increasing oil price.
Abusama M. Alid, regional agriculture director, said the Agriculture department does not acknowledge that there is rice shortage in the country.
"The increase in prices of rice in the markets is not due to insufficiency [of supply] but because of high [production] inputs and oil price that brought up transport costs," he said.
He assured the 3.8-million population in Central Mindanao region of sufficient rice supply, even if prices are increasing, saying the region has a surplus of 146,219 metric tons of plain rice at the end of 2007.
"The surplus can still feed the regional population for about 4.3 months or from January to April," a regional rice sufficiency level report said.
The surplus was on top of the region's palay production for the first quarter of 2008.
From January to March this year, palay harvested in the four provinces of the region reached 384,241 metric tons, data from the regional agriculture office showed.
North Cotabato contributed palay output of 165,092 metric tons during the period; Sultan Kudarat, 105,795 metric tons; South Cotabato, 105,690 metric tons; and Sarangani, 7,664 metric tons.
On the other hand, the regional Agriculture office projected palay production for the April to June period in the area to reach a yield of 114,690 metric tons.
But despite the surplus claimed by the regional Agriculture office, residents in Koronadal City, the regional seat of government, have complained of rising prices of rice as well as scarcity of supply.
The M-1 rice variety, for instance, have reportedly soared from at least P22 per kilo to P28 to P31 a kilo in supermarkets, while there have been scarcity of fancy rice varieties such as the 7-tonner in the wet section of the grocery malls.
This developed as the regional office of the National Food Authority (NFA) has yet to come out with a rice situation in the area. But a conference on such topic is scheduled on April 7.
In South Cotabato, Pangalian B. Busaran, provincial NFA director, attributed the rising price of rice in the global market, which has become expensive.
"Remember, we also import rice from Vietnam and Thailand," he said. (BSS)
