The Philippines may be able to export rice at a larger-scale of 5,000 metric tons (MT) next year as pioneering hybrid rice producer SL Agritech Corp. (SLAC) intends to ship out its entire aromatic Doña Maria rice production to Singapore at an attractive price of more than $420 per metric ton (MT).

Henry Lim Bon Liong, SLAC chairman and chief executive officer, said SLAC presently has 500 hectares of land for its commercial rice variety and plans to expand this by the present dry season planting November to December which it will harvest next year and whose output it may entirely export to Singapore.

He said the Philippines' need to become a rice exporter is equivalent to protecting its rice sector's interest.

"(We may export) about 5,000 tons... We have to be a member of an OREC (Organization of Rice Exporting Countries). There's OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) which controls oil. Rice exporters might even want to control rice trade. If we don't prepare, we might be at their mercy," he said in an interview.

At a high yield of more than 10 MT per hectare, which has been achieved by farmers planting SLAC's hybrid rice variety, the targeted export volume appears to be achievable.

"We are very proud to say we have the only aromatic rice that even IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) and Philrice (Philippine Rice Research Institute) have given us a very high remark for it. This was solely developed by SL Agritech," he said.

Lim said that on top of the Singapore export, there is a "standing offer from Malaysia" for the Philippines to supply it with fancy rice. But Malaysia's import requirement for the high-end rice is big, around 200,000 MT per year, which the Philippines may find difficult to fill up.

"They like to import 100,000 tons from the Philippines at ($350 per MT)," he said.

The Philippines exported a sample volume of 10 MT of hybrid rice to Dubai this year and has so far exported at least 25 MT of organic rice to Switzerland. The challenge is to export on a larger scale.

While there are opportunities to export the fancy rice, Lim said SLAC also wants to fill up the local requirement by hotels and fine dining restaurants for which the Philippines imports about 100,000 MT of fancy rice from Japan, California, and Thailand.

"There's a saying that charity begins at home. We should try to fill up the local requirements first," he said.

However, the company is apparently lured by the opportunity to market Philippine rice as one that keeps up with world standards on fancy rice even as the Japanese reportedly recognized the hybrid rice variety as comparable to the Japonica variety.

Moreover, Lim said the country's hybrid rice is even higher in quality than that of Thailand's, one of the world's biggest rice exporters, as Thai rice is "aromatic but is hard."

Aside from Singapore and Malaysia, the country can export rice to Africa and Indonesia which, Lim stressed, has a big requirement with its 2.5 times bigger population than the Philippines and buys a lot of rice from Vietnam.