UNDERUTILIZED

Sida fund for 2019 cut by P1.5B; DBM believes agencies ‘no capacity’ to spend funds, Villar says

SAN CARLOS CITY Senator Cynthia Villar revealed yesterday that the annual P2 billion Sugar Industry Development Act (Sida) fund was reduced to P500 million for 2019.

Villar, who was the guest of honor in the Pintaflores Festival here yesterday, said the budget cut was due to underutilization or underspending.

“The fund was underspent every year. The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) cut the allocation because they believe that the agencies involved has no capacity to fully spend the funds

allocated,” the senator said.

Sida was created to boost the production of sugarcane and sugar, and increase the income of sugarcane farmers/planters and farm workers, by which the law provides the allocation of P2 billion a year.

They should study the utilization of the funds so that could fully utilize the P2 billion fund, she said.

“They should not go lower than P500 million. I always told them to study on how to fully utilize the fund because if you don’t it will be lowered by the DBM every year,” she added.

Of the P2 billion annual fund of Sida, P1 billion should go to infrastructure for farm to mill roads, P300 million for credit , P100 million for scholarship, P300 million for block farm of the land reform beneficiaries and P300 million for shared facilities program.

Villar revealed that the funds intended for credit is still with the Landbank of the Philippines, which is unutilized.

Emilio Yulo III, board member of the Sugar Regulatory Administration, confirmed the Sida’s budget cut for next year.

He clarified the reason of the fund reduction is because the fund intended for the socialized credit program was not utilized.

Yulo said the reason for the not utilizing the fund was because of the constraint brought by the requirement in the socialized credit program that needs to pass the rules of the Commission on Audit.

But he said that the budget should not be cut down to only P500 million because the fund allocated for the scholarship program was 100 percent utilized and for the infrastructure for the farm to mill road was 96 percent spent.*