Palay production up 5.5% in Q1

Palay production increased 5.5 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2013, according to an official of the Department of Agriculture over the weekend. Agriculture Assistant Secretary and National Rice Program coordinator Dante Delima said in an interview on radio station DWIZ that palay output for the first three months of the year reached 4.5 million metric tons (MT) from 4.24 million MT in the same period in 2012. The government is urging farmers to plant during the dry season in order to bring in 60 percent of the annual production target before the start of the rainy season, when farmers risk typhoons destroying palay cultivation areas. The government aims to achieve self-sufficiency in rice this year by producing 20.4 million MT of palay this year from 18.03 million MT in 2012. The country plans to ship around 100 MT of premium rice to Dubai, Macau, Hong Kong, and the US this year, and plans to increase the amount gradually to 300,000 MT by 2016. — BM, GMA News