Bigger budget for DA pushed
The Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. (Pcafi) has urged the government to allot more funds to boost local food production amid global supply woes and food shocks.
Danilo Fausto, president of Pcafi, said that because the country relies heavily on imports to meet its requirements, the agriculture sector is vulnerable to global events including the protracted Ukraine-Russia war and geopolitical conflicts in the Asean region.
More funds should therefore be allotted for programs to increase local output.
However, Fausto said the indicative budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA) amounting to P178.273 billion was just a small fraction of the P5.768-trillion national budget for next year.
The combined budget of the DA and the Department of Agrarian Reform totaling P221.7 billion indeed represents only 3.8 percent of next year’s allotment.
“What further aggravated the situation is having the agriculture budget to be rice centric as evidenced by the great disparity in the allocation of the budget for 2024, where rice is getting 60 percent of the total agriculture budget while contributing only 23 percent of the total agriculture output,” Fausto said in his speech during the PCAFI’s 25th anniversary held in San Juan City.
Fausto said the government should also increase the proposed spending for other sub-sectors.
“On the other hand, high-value crops which contribute 33.78 percent of the total agriculture output, got a measly 2.6 percent of the total agriculture budget and the livestock sector received 3.1 percent of the budget while contributing 30 percent to the agriculture output,” he added.
