MANILA, Philippines ? The Philippines, the world?s largest rice importer, needs to invest more than P12 billion in 2011 to boost paddy yield and minimize dependence on already-tight global supplies.

Frisco Malabanan, director of the Department of Agriculture?s national rice program, said the entire requirement to achieve self-sufficiency in rice by 2013 might even reach P15 billion.

However, the outgoing administration allocated only P3.1 billion in 2010 for the national rice program, where the flagship project is to expand the areas planted to hybrid rice.

Malabanan said there were concerns that the 2010 budget level might continue for 2011 unless the incoming administration would decide to boost efforts to attain sufficiency in rice supply.

A key component of the country?s efforts to improve rice production in step with increasing consumption was hybrid rice commercialization and this needed at least P500 million in subsidy alone, Malabanan said.

Farmers are currently given a subsidy of P1,000 per hectare to encourage them to plant high-yielding hybrid rice seeds.

About 500,000 hectares are targeted for hybrid rice planting in 2011.

The Department of Agriculture wants the area planted to hybrid rice to reach 800,000 hectares by 2013 to achieve rice self-sufficiency.

?If the subsidy could be increased, even better. We want to encourage farmers and maybe even expand the area planted,? Malabanan said.

Hybrid yields about 15 percent more grain than certified seeds. Some studies place the yield advantage at 33 percent.

Malabanan said his office would be formalizing its budget request to the new administration soon.

Hybrid rice is seen to help the Philippines cope with its long-time deficit in rice production, which has forced the country to import almost 2.5 million tons of the politically sensitive crop for 2010.

In a report, the Philippine Rice Research Institute, which supports hybrid rice seed development and propagation, said that the program was inspired by the success story of China where hybrid-rice seeds yielded 20 percent to 30 percent more than inbred rice varieties.

Malabanan said that besides yielding higher tonnage per hectare, hybrid rice also fetched higher buying price than other varieties.

A survey of five hybrid rice producing provinces (Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Iloilo, Davao del Sur, and Davao del Norte) showed that farmers earned more from hybrid rice at about P32,661 per hectare than the inbred farmers who earned P16,899 per hectare.

Malabanan said that despite the dry spell brought by the El Niño phenomenon, hybrid rice farmers were able to increase their yields by as much as 200 percent.