PORT congestion is hampering the further decrease in rice prices, notwithstanding tariff cuts on imports of the staple, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said on Monday. Despite tax reductions in early August, the price of rice has not fully gone down due to ongoing delays in unloading and logistics, Tiu Laurel pointed out, noting that a ship carrying around 10,000 MT of rice would pay $7,000 per day of stay in the port. "There's no shortage, but [the slow pace of unloading might cause] the price of rice not to go down that soon," Tiu Laurel said in a media briefing by the Makati Business Club. Citing data from the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), the agriculture chief said rice arrivals surged from 100,000 metric tons (MT) in June to more than 380,000 MT in August. However, monthly consumption requirements stand at about 320,000 MT, the small excess kept for buffer stocking. The Department of Agriculture's (DA) price monitoring report showed imported well-milled rice averaged P51.45 per kilo and regular milled rice at P46.74 per kilo. Tiu Laurel said that as of mid-September, only 60,000 MT of rice had entered the country due to congestion at major ports, including Bataan, Subic, Manila and Batangas, where shipments are still waiting to be unloaded. Nonetheless, Tiu Laurel is confident retail prices will decrease even more by mid-October as the shipments are processed. In 2023, inbound shipments of the staple totaled 3.6 million MT, down 5.9 percent from the record-high 3.82 million MT in 2022. For 2024, the DA projects rice imports not exceeding last year's import volume. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said the Philippines could import less rice this year due to a purchase slowdown in the global market. In its monthly report, USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service projected the Philippines' rice import volume to reach 4.6 million MT for 2024, a bit smaller than its previous projection of 4.7 million MT. However, the Philippines still ranked as the world's top rice importer. Vietnam followed with an estimated 2.9 million MT, and the European Union with 2.2 million MT.