The Department of Agriculture (DA) pledged to deliver before the coming planting season five 100-horsepower large tractors and other farm implements to Tawi-Tawi, which is aiming to develop its own rice industry.
DA Secretary Manny Piñol said, during a meeting with Tawi-tawi Gov. Rashidin Matba, that he was given assurances the province “is aiming for rice self-sufficiency and targets to develop 6,000 hectares of new rice farmlands to feed a population of about 100,000.”
At present, the province has less than 200 hectares where rice is planted, most of them in Bongao, Languyan and Mapun. This is largely because it has relied on smuggled rice, which are supposedly selling cheap in the local market.
“The low price resulted in the province relying mainly on smuggled rice instead of developing its rice industry,” Piñol said.
Matba said smuggled rice was sold at P750 per 25-kilo bag for a time, or R30 per kilo, which is lower than the commercial rice sold in the market.
Smuggled rice believed to come from Vietnam were shipped through Malaysia and brought to the provinces of Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Basilan and even Zamboanga Peninsula.
The people of the province are also relatively well-off compared to those in the other provinces.
Tawi-Tawi has the lowest poverty incidence in Bangsamoro with a poverty incidence of only 20.8 percent compared to Lanao del Sur’s 74.3 percent.
Piñol said Matba and other provincial government officials told him the province “does not like to go through another rice supply crisis which they suffered last year when Malaysia closed its borders with the Philippines.”
“Tawi-Tawi hopes to reverse its fortune, from a net importer of smuggled rice to an exporter of high quality rice to neighboring Malaysia,” Piñol said.