In the first quarter of 2024, the Philippines imported 995,841.6 metric tons (MT) of rice, marking a 24.2% increase from the 801,732 MT imported during the same period in the previous year. This uptick in rice imports is part of a broader trend, despite a month-on-month decline in March, where imports fell to 227,675.13 MT from February's 340,180.69 MT. The Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) has been active, issuing 1,403 sanitary and phytosanitary import clearances, reflecting the country's reliance on foreign rice, particularly from Vietnam, which supplied 57.8% or 576,364.3 MT of the total imports.
Other major contributors to the Philippines' rice imports include Thailand with 244,059.43 MT, Pakistan with 115,758.50 MT, and Myanmar with 53,640 MT. The rest of the imports were sourced from Cambodia, Japan, India, and Italy. In the context of yearly imports, there was a slight decrease to 3.6 million MT in 2023, down from the record-high 3.82 million MT in 2022. Despite these figures, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects the Philippines to be the top rice importer globally in 2024, with an anticipated import volume of 4.1 million MT.
Domestically, the Philippines is expected to produce 12.125 million MT of rice in 2024, a slight increase from the previous forecast, attributed to enhanced government funding and improved farming practices like increased fertilizer and hybrid seed usage. The USDA also predicts a rise in rice consumption to 19.6 million MT for the marketing year 2024-2025, in line with population growth. However, rice prices are projected to remain high due to the impact of the El Niño weather pattern and global market conditions, with the cost of imported well-milled rice ranging between P50 and P54 per kilogram and locally milled rice between P48 and P55 per kilogram as of early April 2024.