The Philippines, the world's biggest rice importer in 2005, plans to spend as much as P15 billion on improving its irrigation systems in order to be self-sufficient in rice production in three years.

The government, which has aimed to make the country self sufficient by 2007 through subsidizing the cost of rice seeds, decided in January to move the target date to 2009 and focus on repairing irrigation systems, Agriculture Secretary Domingo Panganiban said.

"The plan of subsidizing 50 percent of the cost of seeds just wasn't feasible, unless you have all the money you want. To sustain production growth on a longer term, you need to increase your irrigated area so your farmers could plant more rice," Panganiban said in a phone interview.

The Philippines imported 1.9 million metric tons (MT) of rice in 2005, according to a US Foreign Agricultural Service report, almost double that of the previous year and overtaking Nigeria as the world's largest importer. Failure by the government to provide enough funds to maintain irrigation systems has meant rice production in the Southeast Asia nation has not kept up with a growing consumer market.

The Philippines last produced enough rice so that exports of the grain beat imports in 1988, when the population was less than 60 million, Panganiban said. There were 86 million people living in the country as of December 2004, according to a US Census Bureau estimate.

"One factor why the country fell short of its previous annual rice production target was the lack of good irrigation system," said Panganiban.

NIA data shows that of the total 3.126 million hectares of rice lands nationwide, only 44.84 percent or 1.402 million hectares have functioning irrigation systems while about 1.724 million hectares have either defective irrigation systems or rely primarily on rainwater for their rice planting activities.

With an improved irrigation network, it is expected that government will be able to showcase the gains of pursuing its hybrid rice production program. Hybrid rice planting can yield as much as six metric tons per hectare, but only if there is an efficient irrigation system.

"A big factor in the previous years' failures to produce enough rice to meet the country's growing rice requirements is that more than half of the irrigation systems built couldn't be used during the planting season because so many of them have deteriorated due to lack of money for operation and maintenance especially when the communal irrigation systems were devolved to the local government units," said NIA director Baltazar Usis.

He explained that the deteriorating conditions of existing irrigation systems is being caused by the lack of operation and maintenance (O&M). The government only provides P1,126 per hectare for O&M, thus, there is a huge discrepancy of P1,274 per hectare from the required ideal O&M budget of P2,400 per hectare.