World Bank: Philippines must shift farm spending to export crops

Agricultural investments in the Philippines must shift to high-value export commodities to help lift millions of farmers out of poverty, the World Bank said Monday.

The bank said 40 percent of the country's work force were in the farm sector even though it accounted for just 14 percent of economic output.

Like the rest of the developing world, the sector must be placed at the centre of the development agenda if United Nations millennium goals of halving extreme poverty by 2015 are to be realised, it said in a statement.

"In the Philippines, we think that the way to increase the benefits of agricultural public investments would be to improve the composition of expenditure, without necessarily increasing its level," said Maryse Gautier, World Bank country director for the Philippines.

"The country would be able to seize new opportunities presented by the global markets by shifting expenditures towards supporting dynamic, high-value added products with export potential.

"This will help increase incomes from agriculture, where more than 40 percent of the Philippine labor force is employed, but which (now) contributes only about 14 percent of national output," Gautier added.

Rice and corn output, used locally as the staple food and for animal feeds respectively, account for about half of the sector's production value.