More rice imports in early 2016 pushed

The country’s chief economist on Friday said the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) would still seek President Aquino’s approval of its proposal to import more rice early next year while the state planning agency assesses the impact of a possibly weaker El Niño as well as the crop damage caused by Typhoon “Lando.”

Neda Director-General and Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan told reporters that additional importation of one million metric tons on top of the 500,000 metric tons programmed for the first quarter of 2016 would ensure that a spike in the price of rice—a food staple among Filipinos—would be avoided.

This intervention formed part of the proposed Roadmap to Address the Impact of El Niño or “Rain” aimed at mitigating the drought’s impact on food supply, ensuring stability of food prices and providing assistance to farmers and households in adversely affected areas. Neda was planning to present the roadmap to the President next week, Balisacan said.

The Neda chief nonetheless acknowledged reports that the dry spell might become shorter and less destructive than expected. Neda had pegged at P19.2 billion the total cost of projects needed to be put in place to mitigate the impact of El Niño, which was earlier projected to last until mid-2016 and peak between December and February.

“We may reduce the proposed budget for El Niño mitigation. We are currently assessing and studying what will be the impact of El Niño in November and December,” Balisacan said.

But the Neda chief also pointed out that while the overall damage caused by the onslaught of typhoon “Lando” early this week was only “very small” as a portion of the economy, vast rice plantations in Central Luzon—one of the country’s top rice producing regions—got flooded.