COVID-19 exhausts more than 70% of DA’s budget by 2020

So far, it has been a financially stressful year for the Department of Agriculture (DA), with the pandemic depleting more than 70 percent of its annual budget for 2020.

The DA is also refocusing the remaining 30 percent of the budget for more COVID-19 interventions, while its request for additional funds has yet to be approved by Congress.

With four months to go for the year, Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the Prosecutor’s Office had to refocus its remaining 2020 budget “to ensure that every Filipino family has enough food on their table” during this pandemic.

For this year, the DA was supposed to receive only P64.7 billion in budget allocation. Given that this is not enough for the country seriously affected by the pandemic, the Prosecutor’s Office had requested a stimulus package of 66,000 million pesos from the national government.

So far, the agency has only received an additional P8.5 billion for its Rice Resilience Project (RRP) and the P3 billion for the Financial Subsidy for Rice Farmers (FSRF).

Of the requested stimulus package of P66 billion, the DA can only get around P24 billion.

During a recent meeting of the economic development group (EDC) of President Rodrigo Duterte’s cabinet, Dar presented the refocused DA 2020 budget of P17.5 billion and the proposed P24 billion stimulus package for agriculture under the “Bayanihan to Recover as One Act” or “Bayanihan 2”.

Dar said that the budget of 24,000 million pesos will be allocated to projects to improve the productivity of fishing (P8,700 million), projects to improve income (8,800 million pesos) and projects of social protection and improvement (6,500 millions of pesos).

“In particular, the additional fund will partially finance the Plant Plant Plant Program of the Duterte administration to guarantee food security and continuous productivity of the agricultural sector,” said DA Deputy Secretary Cheryl Natividad Caballero during the virtual meeting.

“And part of it will be allocated for direct cash subsidies, interest-free loans and other forms of assistance to qualified agribusinesses, farmers and fishermen under the farmer registry or RSBSA, and farmer cooperatives and associations (FCA),” she added .

The Bayanihan 2 is now ready for final approval and signature by President Rodrigo Duterte.

DA is also asking Congress for an annual budget of P280 billion for 2021, more than three times its 2020 budget. Unfortunately, the agency is poised to get only P66.4 billion.

According to Magsasaka’s representative, Algiers Joseph Cabatbat, this budget cut would not help the agency comply with President Rodrigo Duterte’s call during his latest State of the Nation (SONA) address to improve the country’s food production during the pandemic.

During his SONA, he also asked Congress to increase funding for DA’s ‘Plant, Plant, Plant’ program to boost productivity in the agricultural sector during the remaining years of his administration.