Rice stocks in the Philippines, one of the world's top importers, shrank for a third straight month in August, government data showed on Friday, following a decline in the domestic harvest due to El Nino-induced dry weather. Total stocks as of August 1 stood at 2.24 million tonnes, down 12.6 percent from the July inventory and this year's peak of about 3.2 million tonnes in May, despite the arrival of imports from Vietnam and Thailand.
The latest inventory, which includes stocks held by the state food security agency, National Food Authority (NFA), was still up 30 percent on the same time last year and is sufficient to cover 66 days of the country's total requirement, the Philippine Statistics Authority said in a report. The Southeast Asian country has suffered crop losses in recent months due to below normal rainfall and is set to miss its 2015 target for rice output because of an El Nino dry weather pattern that is forecast to be among the strongest since 1950. The staple food, which led a contraction in crop output in the second quarter, has a nearly 10 percent weighting in the Philippines' consumer price index.