The Philippine government is working out a bilateral agreement that will allow Filipino companies to plant rice to about a hundred hectares of land in Papua New Guinea to support the Agriculture Department’s rice sufficiency program.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pinol said the agreement was being completed after meeting twice with his counterpart, who was in the Philippines Wednesday for an official state visit.
“Our target for the next five years is for Filipino farmers to plant to over 1 million hectares in PNG for paddy fields that will be developed by Filipino companies,” he said at the sidelines of a rice situationer briefing in Quezon City.
The deal is a government-to-government arrangement where the Agriculture Department will help with the diplomatic and documentary processing of any Filipino company interested to cultivate paddy rice in PNG.