Lawmaker twits ‘much-hyped’ Masagana 99
ALBAY Rep. Edcel Lagman on Friday said that the Masagana 99 and Kadiwa Centers were both failures contrary to the “much-hyped successes” of the programs amid the efforts by the government to resurrect the flagship projects during the time of the late president Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
In a manifestation during the deliberation of the P164.75 billion proposed 2023 budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Lagman cited various studies showing that the Masagana 99 failed to uplift the still-struggling farm sector apart from leaving poor farmers highly indebted.
“A thorough look at the muchhyped Masagana 99 showed that for a brief time after it was launched, the Philippines did become a rice-exporting country — barely. But data and studies show that this point of pride for the Marcoses and their supporters was not solely attributable to the Masagana 99 credit program,” Lagman added.
Lagman said that Masagana 99 also had an adverse impact on the environment brought about by its dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
“Various sources have highlighted how Masagana 99 was simply unsustainable. One key problem was rural bank insolvency, a consequence of nonpayment by farmer-borrowers of their loans,” he said.
He cited a World Bank report dated May 12, 1983, titled the “Philippines – Agricultural Credit Sector Review,” stating that the decline in institutional credit was the result of arrearages under past Masagana 99 and other supervised credit sub loans.
“In short, farmer-borrowers were defaulting not only because of production shortfalls caused by the various natural disasters affecting Philippine agriculture in the 1970s and the 1980s, but also because the government was not prudently regulating the loans and providing sufficient mechanisms and inducements for repayment. Masagana 99 became, more or less, a massive doleout program,” he noted.
At the same time, Lagman said that ballooning foreign debt obligations, peso devaluation, and drought affected the promise of cheap prime commodities from Kadiwa centers.
“Hoarding and overpricing became common. Raids on stores and warehouses became a news staple. By May 1984, the scarcity of consumer goods accompanied by rising prices remained an unsolved problem for Marcos. The best he could do was to impose price control on basic commodities,” Lagman added.
Lagman explained that the Kadiwa failed despite being backed by four government agencies due to the bureaucratic drag that sunk it and the broader economic and political malaise then afflicting the nation.
“I hope these empirical reports and findings will help my colleagues and the officials of the DA on why the Masagana 99 and Kadiwa ultimately miserably failed,” he said.