Manila, April 5 - The Philippines is targeting 92% self-sufficiency in rice this year and 98% by 2010, an agricultural spokesman said Saturday.
The statement comes after President Gloria Arroyo announced an ambitious multi-billion-peso plan to overhaul the country's agricultural sector to cope with the rising world price of food, particularly rice, the national diet staple.
This will be accomplished by restoring irrigation and post-harvest facilities, said Rex Estoperez, spokesman of the National Food Authority, the agency tasked with importing rice and monitoring the rice market.
He didn't say how self-sufficient the Philippines was in rice. but experts have previously estimated it at 85% to 90%.
Speaking in an interview with ABS-CBN television, Estoperez said Arroyo had been upgrading the agriculture sector even earlier, but the increase in population and the global rise in food prices had forced the government to step up its work.
He said that even with increased rice production, the country would still need to import, adding that it was still more expensive to produce rice in an archipelagic country like the Philippines compared with those with large land masses like Thailand and Vietnam.
The government has previously announced plans to import 1.5 million metric tons of the staple cereal this year and has the capacity to import up to 2.7 million tons if needed.
Arroyo on Friday unveiled a plan to increase food production through increased spending on fertilizer, irrigation and infrastructure, education and research, credits for farmers, and distribution of higher-yielding seeds.
She didn't give a total for how much would be spent, and even local newspapers gave differing figures ranging from PHP36.5 billion ($874 million) to PHP48.7 billion.
Arroyo had said some of the funds would come from government financial institutions, foreign aid and multilateral institutions such as the Asian Development Bank.
She said she hoped spending for these programs would not jeopardize her target of balancing the budget this year.