Philippine Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap Sunday rejected accusations by some "non-government" groups and individuals that the Philippine-Chinese agricultural cooperation is against the interests of the Filipino farmers.

In a statement, Yap said there is nothing in the contracts signed with some Chinese agriculture companies that showed the Philippine government "is committed to surrendering tracts or areas of lands to Chinese corporations."

He said the Philippine government's commitment to foreign investors, whether they are Chinese or any other nationality, is to assist them in locating agri-business lands where they can put their investments.

"We will facilitate, we will assist any foreign investor, be they Chinese or any other nationality. We will assist them in trying to locate agribusiness lands in which they can invest in. I believe this is a commitment of not only the Department of Agriculture but the entire government," Yap said.

He cited a data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in 2006 which states that of all the total loans released by the country's banking sector, only 3.5 percent went to agriculture.

"It is very clear that not enough private investments are going into agriculture. So, if 10-20 years ago we asked Japanese companies to come and build car plants, how different is it for us now asking Chinese companies to come and invest in developing Philippine agribusiness lands. They cannot own them because under the Philippine Constitution, foreigners cannot own land," Yap said.

Yap stressed the government wants to promote the bilateral trade and development in agricultural, fisheries and food products as a means to attain food security, create jobs and alleviate poverty.

Food sufficiency and security, as well as the welfare of agrarian reform beneficiaries and other small farm stakeholders, were the primary objectives of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in forging its array of agribusiness agreements with China, he said.

Yap further said that in entering into these agreements, the DA has ensured that the rules and mechanisms that will safeguard "our farmers and our sovereign interests" are in place and protected by existing Philippine laws and regulations.

Some "non-government" organizations and individuals have recently relentlessly attacked the contracts signed between the Philippine government and some Chinese agricultural companies on developing idle lands in the Philippines.

A group calling itself "Task Force Food Sovereignty (TFFS)", which is supposedly composed of farmers, non-government organizations (NGOs), academe, church personalities and peasant sector as members, has called for the total scrapping of these agriculture and fisheries agreements, saying they "favor and promote investments of Chinese corporations at the expense of the rights of the landless peasants and poor farmers and fishers in the Philippines."

According to them, the most questionable of these deals include the proposed establishment of huge agribusiness farms and processing plants using up more than one million hectares of land for the production of hybrid rice, corn and sorghum and biofuel crops.

These agriculture deals, the TFFS said, are aimed at developing export-oriented production base with little link to the domestic economy, but with grave implications on agrarian reform, food security, rural livelihoods and environment.