16/08/04, MANILA (Dow Jones)--The Philippines is well on its way toachieving its goal of planting over 100,000 hectares of farmlands to oilpalm by 2010, which will usher the country into self-sufficiency, a seniorgovernment official said Monday.In 2004 alone, 10,000 hectares of farmlands will be planted to oilpalm, which will bring the country's total oil palm areas to 35,000hectares, Danilo Coronacion, administrator of the Philippine CoconutAuthority, told Dow Jones Newswires.Coronacion said farmers are "well-motivated" to plant oil palm onexpected higher income compared with the cultivation of coconut trees.He said projected annual income from the cultivation of oil palm isaround 45,000 to 60,000 pesos ($1=PHP55.68) a hectare versus an annualincome of only around PHP10,000 to PHP12,000/ha from coconut plantations.According to Coronacion, domestic demand for palm oil increases byabout 5% to 10% a year, which means the country's palm oil requirement by2010 would reach around 300,000 metric tons from the current 105,000 tonsa year."Without the palm oil development program, our projected imports bythen would be about 267,000 tons because of growing demand from thefast-food, meat processing and fish canning industries," Coronacion said.Current annual production of palm oil is estimated at 45,000 tons. Theshortfall in production is covered by imports.