President Benigno Aquino III declared 2013 the National Year of Rice to intensify the campaign to achieve rice self-sufficiency this year, despite warnings by international organizations and agriculture economists that the goal is unattainable and even imprudent. The president even promised in his year-end speech on the last day of 2012 that Filipinos can expect enough locally produced rice to feed the population soon. “Hindi na lamang rice self-sufficiency, kundi ang pag-eexport ng matataas na klase ng bigas ang habol natin pagdating ng 2013,” he said. Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) senior fellow Roehlano Briones, however, assessed the country’s capability to halt rice imports and concluded that the administration’s expensive Food Staples Sufficiency Program (FSSP) is “too ambitious” to be realized. `The rice self-sufficiency target is unlikely to be achieved, whether in 2013 or even over the course of the decade to 2020,` Briones said in PIDS study published late in 2012. The Philippines, one of the world’s largest importers of rice, is set to end such imports altogether by producing 13.03 million tons of milled rice in 2013—a goal, which for Briones, is simply `unrealistic.`
