DA budget likely to settle at P57 B

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Agriculture (DA) will no longer see an increase in its 2018 budget as the Senate declined the agency’s request for a P100 billion allocation.

Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol has been seeking a budget allocation of at least P100 billion for next year after its original P212-billion proposal had been rejected.

The Senate is inclined to approve a P57 billion budget for the DA.

“I realigned and I put the budget to more important things,” Sen. Cynthia Villar said on the sidelines of the ASEAN Agriculture Summit 2017 on Wednesday.

“I think DA has to plan well its budget, one that will go to programs that will improve the lives of farmers and fisherfolks. We just reallocated so that even if they have a small budget, they will be able to maximize it properly,” Villar said.

In particular, Villar focused on the distribution of rice seeds to farmers and increased allocation for the livestock and poultry industry.

“Instead of pure hybrid seeds, we divided it, half will be for hybrid and another half for inbred. Inbred performs just like the hybrid seeds but its cost is 15 percent only of the hybrid seeds,” Villar said.

“The rice seeds will be given to PhilRice (Philippine Rice Research Institute) to distribute inbred seeds to cooperatives and irrigators to teach rice farmers how to produce inbred seeds that will give them six metric tons per hectare from the current four MT per hectare,” she added.

While DA’s plan is to pursue pure hybrid, the Senate believes otherwise.

“While they have beliefs that we do not want to interfere with, that hybrid is better than inbred, we decided to just divide it so as not to have any arguments anymore,” Villar said.