In support to President Arroyo's 10-point agenda which she highlighted in her State of the Nation Address, the science community, through the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), forwarded policy resolutions to meet the country's rice productivity and sufficiency needs.

The President, in her 10-point agenda for national development, stressed the need for the creation of six to 10 million jobs, development of agribusiness in one to two million hectares of farmlands, tripling of loans for small and medium enterprises, decentralization of progress, and a just resolution of the peace process.

To meet the country's rice needs, the NAST headed by its president Dr. perla Santos Ocampo, in its recent 26th Annual Scientific meeting (ASM) recommended the following executive and legislative actions:

· Persevere in upholding the national policy on rice self-sufficiency;
· Make good on the safety nets in the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA) by way of legislated public investments in agriculture and rural areas in anticipation of the full liberalization of the rice industry;
· Identify and implement within the one million to two million hectares of land for agribusiness in the President's 10-point agenda specific areas for public-private convergence program on hybrid rice;
· Expand the implementation of the Hybrid Rice Commercialization Program and complementary programs to increase yield and reduce production cost;
· Invest at least 1 percent of the gross value added (GVA) in agriculture for research and development (Section 83a of AFMA);
· Reemphasize the management and funding of extension programs of the local government units in view of the increasing knowledge intensiveness and location-specificity of agricultural endeavors; and
· Streamline interventions of the National Food Authority (NFA) in the marketplace by deepening the participation of the private sector in domestic and international trade leading to NFA's ultimate mandate to manage the country's buffer stock.

The NAST-ASM resolution said that rice, being the staple food of 90 percent of Filipinos, makes it the most important cereal in the country. It accounts for about 20 of the GVA in agriculture 0or 3.5 percent of gross domestic product, and about 12-million people involved in the industry, as farmers, millers, traders, truckers, retailers and laborers and their households.

However, low productivity, high cost supply-chain systems, and inadequate infrastructure and support services diminish the global competitiveness of the Philippine rice industry.

The resolution stressed that the government should act of the proposed measures as the State upholds its policy on modernization of agriculture and fisheries sectors through Republic Act 8435, or the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act of 1997 (as amended by RA 9281), and further upholds the principle of global competitiveness as embedded in Section 2d of RA 8435, which states that "The State shall enhance the competitiveness of the agriculture and fisheries sectors in both domestic and foreign markets."

The NAST said further that the government needs firmer actions in favor of its domestic agriculture because since the Philippines is a signatory to the World Trade Organization, it is bound to liberalize international trade on agriculture commodities with more substantial external compliance than domestic support to the agricultural sector.