Rice self-sufficiency rises to 78% in 2025

In 2025, the Philippines achieved a significant milestone in rice self-sufficiency, with the country's self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) rising to 78.1 percent. This increase, driven by reduced rice imports, boosted the country's reliance on domestic production, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The SSR, which measures the share of local supply to total supply, had previously hit a 37-year low of 71.7 percent in 2024.

While this represents a 6.4 percentage point improvement from the previous year, the country's self-sufficiency level still falls short of the 80 percent threshold, last reached in 2021. The Department of Agriculture (DA) aims to reach 84 percent self-sufficiency by the end of 2026. A four-month ban on rice imports, implemented from September to December 2024, played a crucial role in achieving the 78.1 percent SSR level.

This ban led to a decline in total rice imports by nearly 30 percent, reaching 3.39 million metric tons. Agricultural experts attribute the expansion of SSR in 2025 to the favorable weather conditions and the reduced imports. However, former agriculture undersecretary Fermin Adriano emphasizes that rising imports may not necessarily indicate significant progress in rice productivity or help tame food inflation.

Former agriculture undersecretary Fermin Adriano and Raul Montemayor of the Federation of Free Farmers argue that SSR is a deceptive measure as it only considers the ratio between imports and local output. They claim a better gauge would be to take into account local production and the total rice requirement. Moreover, the government's target of 84 percent self-sufficiency may be challenging to achieve in 2026 due to the potential impact of El Niño on rice production, coupled with rising input costs.

The projected SSR level of 84 percent would require an additional 1.6 million metric tons of rice, or nearly three million metric tons of palay, to be harvested.