SRA seeks approval of P2 billion funding from SIDA

MANILA, Philippines — The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) hopes to get an early approval for a P2-billion funding from the Sugar Industry Development Act (SIDA) for next year to help modernize the sugar industry and make it globally competitive.

The early approval of the fund would allow the agency to have ample time to spend and allocate the funding to proper projects for the whole year, SRA administrator Pablo Luis Azcona said in a briefing here in Victorias City, Negros Occidental over the weekend.

“Before, the budget would be approved usually in August or September. It is difficult to spend it when you get approval in August or September and you only have until December,” he said.

“This year, we were able to have it approved by March, so we have a lot more time to do projects and then what we are trying to do now is before the year ends, try to seek approval already for 2024,” Azcona said.

But while the higher SIDA fund was approved at an earlier time, only half of what was pushed was approved.

“This year, we tried to push for P2 billion and we lined up all projects based on P2 billion and only P1 billion was approved,” the SRA chief said.

The SIDA budget has been cut over the years starting from P2 billion in 2016, P1.5 billion in 2017, P1 billion in 2018 and P500 million annually until 2022 due to its low usage.

The sugar industry has been calling on the government to revisit the SIDA as farmers found compliance in accessing programs quite challenging.

Moreover, the fund was also slashed due to delays in the procurement of equipment.

“The snag that hit us when SIDA was initially made…was because we had a big delay in the equipment side. We had a P500-million equipment purchase that was delayed by three years,” Azcona said.

To avoid the same scenario, the SRA decided to take over the bidding procedures to ensure the timely procurement of equipment.

“Now, all the biddings are done by the SRA itself, so we are doing everything,” the SRA chief said, noting it will be a big boost to farmers.

The SRA is also focusing on the improvement of soil laboratories to produce better yields.

“Our mandate is to improve production so we feel that we need to rejuvenate the soil in order to do that. And we need to approach this a lot more scientifically, we have been very wasteful in practice with fertilization and everything,” Azcona said.

“I think we have to slowly go more accurately and try to save every peso that we can so that the farmers will learn how to start being globally competitive,” he said.

Currently, 50 percent of the SIDA funds is allocated for farm-to-market roads (FMR). For the other half of the fund, 30 percent is for research and mechanization, 30 percent for socialized credit, 30 percent for block farms development, and the remaining 10 percent for scholarships.

“Currently, the block farm budget is fully utilized. Our scholarships and FMR are also fully utilized. The only part that we hope we can fully utilize is the socialized credit,” Azcona said.

If the P2-billion release of the SIDA fund is approved, this will allow the SRA to double spending for each component. “If we get P2 billion, everything will double up,” the SRA chief said.