Bargaining Power of Suppliers | | 1. Supplier concentration | According to Tim Roache of the DPI Agribusiness Group, over 50% of the country’s land mass is classified as agricultural land. Agricultural production is undertaken by small landholders who either lease or own their lands or companies with vast agricultural estates. Due to rapid population growth and escalating commodity prices, increasing food self-sufficiency is a major concern. Similarly, food produced from large agricultural estates results in the Philippines being a major producer of sugar, rice, corn, tropical fruits, poultry, and pork. Manufacturing and agriculture comprise more than half (65%) of the country’s economy, and the agrifood sector employs over one-third of the population. Calata corporation (one of the biggest agricultural conglomerates, 2.7 billion) | 2. Availability of substitute inputs | The Philippines’ food processing sector is the most dominant manufacturing sector in the country. It accounts for 40% of total manufacturing output, contributes 20% of GDP per annum and is growing at 8-10% per annum. The sector comprises of fruits and vegetables, meat and poultry, flour, dairy products, fish and marine products, and the like. This sector is heavily reliant on both domestically produced and imported agrifood products. Recent economic liberalizations by the government has resulted in a trading system that’s relatively open and has some of the lowest applied tariffs in the region. (membership to the WTO, ASEAN, AANZFTA) Victorian agrifood exporters, together with other local agrifood providers, can be sources of agricultural products. (Roache, 2009) | 3. Importance of suppliers’ input to buyer | When it comes to agricultural products, about 80 per cent of our raw materials are sourced locally. For rice, it’s 100 per cent," said billionaire Tony Tan Caktiong, who spoke about the