The country’s palay (unmilled rice) production could reach more than 20 million metric tons (MMT) this year, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Thursday.

At a virtual briefing, Ariel Cayanan, Agriculture undersecretary for operations, told reporters in Taglish that if rice-import projections were included, the country could harvest 20.472 MMT of the staple, “which is 1 million more than what we had in 2020.”