The Department of Agriculture (DA) said Sunday that rice prices will decrease during the harvest season.

In an interview with dzBB, DA spokesperson Assistant Secretary Arnel de Mesa said the lower rice price could now be felt, especially imported rice

“This September, it’s the harvest season. The peak of the harvest season for most farmers is October to November during this wet season,” De Mesa said.

“Now that it’s wet season for local farmers, we are expecting that during the harvest period, this would have an effect on lowering rice prices,” he added.

Based on the DA’s price monitoring, people buy imported regular milled rice at P42 per kilo while imported well-milled rice is sold at P45 per kilo.

De Mesa said he also expects that the harvested palay would compensate for crop damage.

“The total damage report, including El Nino, Typhoon Carina, and other storms, has reached over 400,000 metric tons in losses. This is still within the limit of our expected damages,” De Mesa said.

“We’re still hopeful. Last year, we had a good harvest of 20.06 million metric tons. We’re still hoping to reach 20 million metric tons this year as well,” he said.

De Mesa also said there would be enough rice supply in the following months.

“As for our supply, we don’t have any issues because our imported rice is at three million metric tons as of early September. We expect our national stock inventory to last more than 60 days after December,” he said.

The DA earlier reported that crop losses due to the combined effects of the enhanced southwest monsoon and Typhoon “Ferdie” amounted to P600.83 million. Jaspearl Tan/DMS