Philippines To Continue Subsidy For High Yielding Rice Seeds

The Philippine Department of Agriculture has decided to continue subsidizing high-yielding rice seeds to local farmers in order to attain the national goal of attaining self-sufficiency in the grain by the year 2010.

According to Frisco Malabanan, the agriculture department's program director for rice, the department will be allocating PHP9 billion (US$207 million) to plant the country's total rice area of 4.2 million hectares with high-yielding seeds.

For Philippines to achieve self-sufficiency by 2010, paddy rice output would have to increase to 18.45 million MT in 2009 and then to 19.65 million MT in 2010. This year's paddy rice output is projected to increase by 6.7% -to 17.3 million - from a year earlier.