RICE TRADERS are expected to depress their offer prices for palay, or unmilled rice, to give themselves a margin of safety should the international price of rice fall, threatening to flood the Philippine market with cheap imports, a farming organization said.
Federation of Free Farmers National Manager Raul Q. Montemayor said the buying price of palay, the form in which farmers sell their crop, could be purchased at “lower than normal prices to play safe” should traders come to believe that “international prices will eventually go down and cheap imports might surge again.”
Currently, Mr. Montemayor said in a mobile phone message, high international rice prices are keeping import volume down.