Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
TABLE 7.4
Monthly distribution of imported rice arrivals, 1995-99 (percentage of
import arrivals)
Month
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
Average
a
January
—
12.9
—
8.6
30
.6
11.1
February
—
11.7
—
9
.6
23
.6
9.9
March
—
32.5
12.6
6.4
17.2
13.7
April
—
22.4
31.3
9.4
11.8
15.3
May
—
12
23.1
10.1
13.5
12.5
June
—
4.7
26.1
11.7
4.5
10.7
July
2.9
—
5.5
10
.6
—
5.4
August
42.2
—
—
11.2
—
7.2
September
27.9
3.8
—
6.2
—
5
.6
October
21.8
—
—
6.4
—
4
.6
November
—
—
—
5.2
—
2.3
December
5.2
—
1.4
5.8
—
3
.6
Import volume
(MT)
252,953
913,443
730,713
2,092,263
765,266
SOURCE
: National Food Authority.
NOTE
: — indicates not available.
a
Import weighted.
age of total import volume for the year. The numbers suggest that about 70 per-
cent of the total imports arrived between March and June. With a much larger
volume contracted for 1998, delivery was a year-round activity with about one-
fourth arriving during the first quarter, or 6 months earlier than the expected
peak of sales. Import deliveries during the harvest season depressed farmgate
prices. The huge carryover stocks for 1999, plus the arrival of newly contracted
volumes as early as January, resulted in an extremely large NFA inventory.
Buffer Stocks
NFA maintains two types of rice reserve: a strategic rice reserve equivalent to 30
days' consumption on 1 July every year, and an emergency rice reserve equiva-
lent to 15 days' consumption at any time of the year. The two types of stocks
have two different objectives. While the strategic rice reserve is meant to cush-
ion the effects of relatively higher retail prices during the lean months (July-
September), the emergency rice reserve is maintained to enable the government
to immediately respond to emergency situations, including natural disasters.
EMERGENCY RICE RESERVE
. In early 1993, NFA introduced the concept
of an emergency rice reserve as a contingency and quick-response mechanism
in times of natural calamities when normal flow of rice is disrupted. The emer-
gency rice reserve plan categorized provinces based on the overall situation of
supply and demand, estimated as the difference between production and con-
