More funds for agri dev’t
IN the ongoing congressional review of the proposed 3.002-trillion national budget or General Appropriations Act for 2016, attention has once again been called to the very low priority given to agriculture in the allocation of government funds.
As is to be expected, the biggest budget among the government departments is that of the Department of Education (DepEd), in compliance with the constitutional provision that “the state shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education.” For 2016, the proposed budget for the DepEd is 436.2 billion.
The second biggest department budget is that of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) – 401.14 billion – possibly because of the many public works projects scheduled during the period leading to the presidential election of May, 2016.
The third biggest department budget is that of the Department of National Defense – 172 billion. At a time when we are facing great uncertainty in the South China Sea and in Mindanao, there is considerable support for increased spending for defense.
The next three departments with the biggest budgets are the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) – 156 billion, the Department of Health (DOH) – 128.5 billion, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) – 107.6 billion.
The Department of Agriculure (DA) is seventh in the list, with only 53.39 billion. This is only about a third of the 2016 budget of the DILG of Secretary Mar Roxas, the Liberal Party’s presidential candidate. It is also only half of the budget of the DSWD which is carrying out a 62-billion Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program doling out monthly amounts to poor families around the country.
The biggest problem facing the country today is mass poverty. This has repeatedly come out in surveys in which families rated themselves. The government places poverty incidence in the country at 25 percent and President Aquino has vowed to reduce this to about 18 percent by next year.
The government’s principal program to combat poverty, however, seems to be doleouts through the CCT, when it should be job production. There has been much progress in job production with our expanded services program, notably in tourism and in business outsourcing. There could be much greater progress if a concentrated effort was made to develop the nation’s agriculture, where the incidence of poverty is highest among farmers and fisherfolk, it was pointed out the other day by Abono Party-list Rep. Francisco E. Ortega III. Agricultural modernization would also meet the nation’s food security needs.