Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje will try to jumpstart the stalled $1-billion food security program of San Miguel Corp. and the Kuok Group.

In an interview over the weekend, Paje said he would try to revive the stalled $1 billion food security program of the SMC-Kuok Group that was first announced in July 2008 in a lavish ceremony attended by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Kuok Group chairman Robert Kuok, then Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, SMC chairman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. and SMC president Ramon Ang.

SMC and the Kuok Group had agreed to jointly invest $1 billion to develop a million hectares of idle land to help boost production of rice, corn, sugar and other crops in the Philippines. The project was supposed to address the critical food security issue.