DUMAGUETE CITY, Philippines ? Efforts are now underway to rehabilitate the country?s ailing coffee industry, which generated millions of dollars for the country in the 1970s to 1980s.

Nicolas Matti, cochair of the seven-year-old Philippine Coffee Board (PCB), said here recently that under the coffee rehabilitation program, the board would help farmers increase coffee production.

The Department of Agriculture and the PCB reached an agreement to implement the coffee rehabilitation program in 2008.

Under the agreement, the DA would provide P50 million, while the PCB would identify the areas to be rehabilitated. It will also formulate and implement the program.

The PCB decided to focus on 21 provinces in Luzon, Visayas and northwest and southeast Mindanao.

The PCB would work with a partner, either a local government unit or a nongovernment organization, to help survey the target areas and identify the farmer-beneficiaries.

The PCB would set aside P50,000 as mobilization fund for its partner. In Negros Oriental, PCB?s partner is the provincial government.

Matti said under the program, PCB would give 20-25 bags of fertilizer for every hectare of land planted with 1,000 coffee trees.

Aside from the fertilizer assistance, Matti said the PCB would also provide the farmers with needed farm implements.

Matti recalled that in the late 1980s, the Philippines exported coffee to the United States at a rate of about 35,000 metric tons a year, bringing in about $150 million to the country annually.

At that time, he said, the Philippines was producing 70,000 to 72,000 MT of coffee and the local consumption then was only 30,000 MT a year.

At present, Matti disclosed that the Philippine consumption of coffee is 60,000 MT to 65,000 MT a year, but the country produces only around 30,000 MT annually.

The shortage has prompted the country to import coffee from Vietnam, which was only producing 10,000 to 15,000 MT of coffee during the heyday of the Philippine coffee industry, Matti said.

Vietnam increased its coffee production to 300,000 to 400,000 MT in 1997 and to one million MT in 2002.

?We are now buying about P3 billion worth of coffee from Vietnam annually. In effect, we are also giving jobs to Vietnam farmers that could have been provided to Filipino farmers,? Matti said.

He added that about 50,000 Filipino families were directly dependent on coffee industry.

Matti said the decline in the country?s coffee production started when coffee prices plummeted from $3,500 per MT in the late 1980s to an all-time low of $350 to $400 per MT from 1997 to 2003.

The situation was aggravated by the massive land conversion in the Philippines and the shift of many farmers to other crops.