The multisectoral National Agriculture and Fisheries Council (NAFC) is mandated by law to monitor the use of the Department of Agriculture’s huge budget. It was not allowed to fulfill this mandate during the previous administration, which is one major reason why massive corruption took place at that time.
When an Alyansa Agrikultura-NAFC member asked for a meeting during the previous administration to monitor the use of the DA budget, all NAFC meetings were canceled.
But last April 12, exercising admirable political will, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala ordered the creation of a NAFC Budget Committee.
It did take four months and 13 days for the bureaucracy to catch up with Alcala’s order, but at least the “expect-inspect” mantra for the DA budget is now being put to good use.
Expect
Alyansa Agrikultura and other private sector leaders worked closely with Alcala, as well as Senate and House of Representatives Agriculture Committee chairs Senator Francis Pangilinan and Rep. Mark Mendoza, during the Agriculture and Fisheries 2025 (AF 2025) Conference last Feb. 10-11.
They jointly formulated a paradigm shift to public-private partnership (PPP) in agricultural governance, with a vision towards 2025. This started with the proposed 2012 DA budget.
1. Though all AF 2025 participants helped in proposing a 54 percent increase for the DA 2012 budget compared to the 11 percent decrease this year, it is Alcala who deserves the most credit for this welcome reversal.
We now expect the senators and representatives to support their respective agricultural committee co-chairs Pangilinan and Mendoza in preserving this necessary budget increase.
2. While we expect the Senate and House of Representatives to preserve this increase, we also expect them to improve the distribution of this budget.
For example, the rice program has a stated proposed budget of P36 billion (this includes P24.8 billion for irrigation and P5 billion for farm-to-market roads). However, two sectors that have more poor people than the rice sector are getting less than 2 percent of the budget allocated for the rice sector.
Coconut farmers will get only P0.7 billion, while the fisherfolk will get P0.6 billion. We expect that Congress will give these disadvantaged sectors a larger share of the DA budget.
3. We expect that areas that have a high risk of not being optimally managed will give up some of their proposed budgets to sectors such as coconut, fisheries, and high value fruits and vegetables (this last high-potential group has a budget of only P1.1 billion).
AF 2025 Rice Cluster coordinator Emil Javier believes that the irrigation area does not have the absorptive capacity for the proposed P26.7 billion budget. P20 billion is the better level, with the P6.7-billion savings going to other deserving agricultural sectors.
4. We expect that social and economic Returns on Investment (ROI) and absorptive capacity will guide budget decisions. As an example, for trading centers which we fully support, it was shown that only 3 percent, instead of the pro-rated 71 percent, of the P675 million has been obligated as of August 19. The proposal to increase this to P911 million should be approved only if long-run financial sustainability and absorptive capacity are shown. Otherwise, a more modest budget is recommended.
Inspect
Aside from expecting the right budget decisions, we should monitor or “inspect” so that these decisions are faithfully carried out. Otherwise, the funds will be lost to corruption again.
At the Aug. 24 meeting, CODE NGO’s Patrick Go wisely recommended that a better budget monitoring (inspect) mechanism be put in place, especially since there is such a large increase in the budget of the DA.
Budget Committee co-chair Edgardo Codilla asked for a larger budget monitoring budget than the current P200,000 given to each Regional Agriculture Fisheries Council (RAFC).
Alyansa Agrikultura president Arsenio Tanchuling said that during the previous administration, each RAFC received a P1.2 million monitoring budget. This fund should definitely be increased to strengthen the “inspect” function.
In addition, the RAFCs must now help file charges when they discover anomalies, unlike in the past when virtually nothing was done with the RAFC reports.
Conclusion
We will wait for the results of the “expect-inspect” management mechanism as applied to both the current and 2012 budgets. We recommend that the paradigm shift proposed during the AF 2025 Conference be implemented immediately, especially as it relates to the DA budget.
(The author is chair of Agriwatch. For inquiries and suggestions, email agriwatch_phil@yahoo.com or telefax (02) 8522112)