MANILA, Philippines–For 2015, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) can become a powerful ally of farmers, fisherfolk and agribusiness. That depends on whether it will have the political will to ensure that the P85 billion of the Department of Agriculture budget will actually be used to benefit agriculture. This is especially important because 2015 is a pre-election year, when much of the DA budget is unscrupulously used in “aid of election.”
In the past, the DA budget has also been improperly used. This is either because of outright corruption or programs that do not address the true identified needs of agriculture.
For starters, the DBM can explain why the DA’s 23-percent budget increase from P61 billion in 2012 to P75 billion in 2013 resulted only in 1.1 percent agriculture growth, and while the P80 billion in 2014 recorded only 1.9 percent growth. Both growth rates are way below the government’s 3.5-4.5 percent target. In contrast, the Department of Trade and Industry had a budget of only P3.5 billion in 2013 with industry growth of 9.5 percent, and P4.4 billion in 2014 with a 6.9 percent growth.
In its website, the DBM is mandated “to promote the sound, efficient and effective management utilization of government resources.” From this statement, it is clear that the DBM should not only recommend the budget, but also monitor closely how this budget is used. This is especially important for agriculture, where the poverty incidence of 40 percent is much more than the 25 percent national average.
In fact, the first part of the DBM vision is to be “a champion of a results-oriented budget… that will enable the government to steer the country toward meaningful development that empowers the poor and the marginalized.” Clearly, the DBM has a commendable bias for the less fortunate sectors.
The Alyansa Agrikultura (AA) directly engages the DA and cochairs the budget committee of the public-private sector Philippine Council for Agriculture and Fisheries (PCAF), formerly the National Agriculture and Fishery Council (NAFC). While the AA appreciates the increased DA budget during this administration, it has some serious disappointments regarding budget formulation and implementation.
When the AA joined the NAFC in 2007 under the Arroyo administration, all subsequent NAFC meetings were cancelled. This was probably because the DA had stated that NAFC should perform its mandated function of monitoring DA budget use. Under the Aquino administration, the NAFC resumed its meetings. A NAFC budget committee was formed to monitor budget use. But after the first meeting, it did not convene for three and a half years.
When corruption charges involving the DA surfaced and the budget committee wanted to be informed of the on-going investigation, a DA senior official told the committee members: “Let’s not talk about this—it’s only politics.” Up to now, there is no report on the DA investigation of the alleged Napoles scam which unfairly cited farmers and fisherfolk as beneficiaries.
PAFC budget committee cochair Arsenio Tanchuling said he would no longer recommend approval of a DA budget at a NAFC meeting if NAFC private sector members would not be able to review the budget beforehand. This is where the DBM can come in.
The DBM should ensure that each directive requiring private sector involvement before agency budget submission is strictly implemented. It should take two additional steps.
First, it should allow DBM meetings with farmer and fisherfolk organizations for jointly recommended DA-private sector priority budget items that the DBM wishes to reject. An example is given by United Broilers Raisers Association (Ubra) president Elias Jose Inciong: “We had wanted to meet DBM officials to argue for common service facilities which competitor countries like Thailand provide its farmers. But we were told that DBM wanted to talk only to DA officials.”
Second, the DBM should make representations to Congress that farmer, fisherfolk and agribusiness representatives be allowed to testify during congressional budget hearings. For example, these representatives may wish to ask why budget support is given for the ISO9000 management systems of the DTI, but not for DA’s PAFC. In addition, they may also ask why the PAFC budget monitoring was cut rather than increased for 2015.
As far as the DA is concerned, DBM is more involved in its budget formulation than in budget monitoring. But the latter function is incorporated in both the DBM mandate and mission. The DBM should therefore pay as much attention to budget monitoring.
The election fever has started. The huge DA budget has been and will likely be the target for pre-election illegal expenses. Once again, as in the pork and other scams, farmers and fisherfolk will be used as the reason for this corruption. They are tired of being exploited again.
The DBM can stop this from happening with effective budget monitoring. It should work with its PCAF national and regional counterparts. On the positive side, the DBM can unite with PAFC to ensure that the DA budget is used for the actual needs of farmers, fisherfolk and agri business. Only then can the DBM become a true ally of agriculture.
(The author is chair of Agriwatch, former Secretary for Presidential Flagship Programs and Projects, and former Undersecretary for Agriculture, Trade and Industry. For inquiries and suggestions, e-mail agriwatch_phil@yahoo.com or telefax (02) 8522112).