THE PHILIPPINES IS FORGING BIOTECHnology partnerships with some of the world?s top five coffee producers to boost output and trim its P3-billion annual import bill.

Domestic demand for coffee stands at 65,000 metric tons (MT), but production reaches only 30,000 MT. The difference is imported mainly from Vietnam.

Vietnam is second only to top producer Brazil in terms of volume and quality. Colombia, Indonesia and India round up the top five, according to the Philippine Coffee Board.

?Right now, the Philippines is ranked number 17 or 18. But in time, we can improve and become an exporter again,? PCB chair Pacita Juan said in an interview.

PCB has forged a biotechnology agreement in July with the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Brazil?s Instituto Agronomico de Campinas of the State of Sao Paulo.

?The agreement with Brazil is to exchange germplasm, or planting materials such as seeds. We are also looking at Vietnam, which has so-called new age hybrids, and Indonesia,? she said.

?Their (Vietnam?s) strains can help us because they can harvest up to 3 million tons per hectare. We harvest only 700 kilos per hectare,? Juan said.

Dr. Rene Rafael C. Espino, Ginintuang Masaganang Ani-HVCC national program coordinator, said that the Philippines needs 40 million seeds in order to have excess coffee to export.

?We are going to need 40,000 hectares of coffee, with 1,000 seeds planted per hectare,? he said.

Espino said the DA was also setting aside P150 million for a sufficiency road map to be drafted and implemented by the PCB. About P50 million was budgeted for this year, with another P100 million to be released for tree planting and farm rehabilitation programs.

Besides encouraging production, the government also forged a partnership with Nestlé to make sure that farmers can sell their crops and be encouraged to keep tending their coffee trees.

?Our goal is to work together to encourage the farming of coffee so that the Philippines becomes self-sufficient in coffee in 5 to 7 years, and then afterwards, becomes a net exporter in coffee,? Nestlé chair and CEO Nandu Nandkishore said.

The Philippines? coffee industry was self-sufficient until 1998, with producers even able to export to such countries as the United States, Japan and Korea.

In 1999, however, market price for coffee fell steeply due to overproduction in Vietnam.

Coffee producers in the Philippines began abandoning the crop and the country has since become a net importer.