Incoming Agriculture secretary Emmanuel Piñol said Wednesday he will ask for P30 billion from the government to help farmers and fishers displaced by El Niño dry spell.
Piñol said in a news briefing the agriculture and fishery sector bore the brunt of the drought this year.
“Our agriculture sector is down due to the effects of El Niño. The growth of the sector during the first quarter of this year is very bad,” he said.
“I talked to [incoming Finance] secretary Carlos Dominguez and told him that if we don’t pour new funds in the form of calamity assistance to the agriculture sector and the fisheries sector, we will really find it hard to recover,” he said.
President-elect Rodrigo Duterte named Piñol as his agriculture secretary, in place of Proceso Alcala.
Farm and fishery production slumped 4.53 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, on lower rice, corn and fishery production amid the dry spell.
“We have to take into consideration the fact that we are signatories of international commitment and subsidies are not allowed, so we will look at this as calamity assistance to the farming and fisheries sector,” Piñol said.
“Offhand, I’m proposing a P30-billion additional funding for the rehabilitation of agriculture and fisheries sector so they would recover right away and this would come into a form of assistance,” he said.
Piñol said the urgent budget would be used for immediate intervention such as fertilizer assistance, farm inputs and livelihood projects.
He said under the Duterte administration, rice sufficiency would also be pursued.
“It is imperative that we should have rice sufficiency, but I will not tell you when this will be achieved. What I will tell you is we’re going to exert all efforts and focus our resources to make sure that we will attain rice sufficiency,” Piñol said.
Piñol said the Duterte administration would aim to expand rice production area by one million hectares, which would translate into an additional rice harvest of 4.8 million metric tons.
“There will be no radical change and we will work on the initial target of Secretary Proceso Alcala because he was able to improve rice production,” Piñol said.
He said the new administration would also give more attention to irrigation. “There will be a major shift in the irrigation. There are wide areas which only produce once a year because the main problem is irrigation. We need to focus on small irrigation projects and small water irrigating pumps,” Piñol said.