Agriculture secretary Arthur Yap yesterday opened the two days of talks, which discussed implementing a five point programme designed to improve the country's foreign trade amidst increasing competition from rivals within Asia.

The talks come as the country looks to boost exports in line with prominent emerging markets, with food and agricultural production in particular set to dominate the proceedings.

In 2006, the country exports accounted for about $47bn (€35bn), driven in part by food processing, and raw material supplies such as sugar and corn according to figures supplied by the U.S Department of State.

These figures remain some way behind those of China, South Korea and Malaysia though with exports at $762.3bn (€566bn) in 2005, $360bn (€267bn) in 2006, and $145bn (€107bn) in 2005 respectively.

In order to improve exportation of the country's products, the government has prepared plans to ramp up public spending within agricultural infrastructure, technology, harvesting and storage facilities.

It also hopes to expand access to rural credit whilst opening up new domestic and international markets.

In a press release Yap added that the government hoped the spending can push annual export growth to about five - six per cent over the coming decade. The current rate is three - four per cent.

This, he added, would also allow producers to better meet the challenges facing the supply chain from climate change, population growth and increasing demand from both human and biofuels consumption.

The new measures were drafted during a private sector consultative workshop on Friday, attended by some of the country's leading agricultural, broiler and sugar-milling representatives.

By the conclusion of the talks today, Yap is confident that the country will be better prepared to meet the demands of the global food trade.

"We will be fine-tuning the doable action plans and workable production strategies for major commodities, which were crafted during the DA's May 18 consultative workshop, in the hope of coming up with a comprehensive blueprint for high farm profitability, productivity and exports this year and onwards," he stated.