Irrigation watch

No water, no food. That may sound like an exaggerated statement, but it is not. A look at today’s literature shows an inextricable link between water and food. On a more ominous note, others say the next global crisis, and even war, will revolve around water.

Compounded by climate change and rapid population growth, we must now look at the issue of water closely.

DA Budget Performance
YEAR BUDGET % INCREASE AGRICULTURE
2006 15.7 9% 37%
2007 19.1 22% 5.00%
2008 27.6 45% 3.20%
2009 48.7 76% 0.03%
2010 37.7 -22% -0.12%

Before we look at the irrigation component of the DA budget, we should examine whether the increases in the DA budget have improved our agricultural growth.

DA budget performance

Despite the fact that the 2009 and 2010 DA budgets are more than double the 2006 budget (with 2009 more than three times the budget), the growth rates of 0.03 percent and -0.12 percent of the recent two years indicate that the DA budget has not been properly used. A major cause may have been corruption because of poor budget monitoring.

Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala should be commended on the 4.3 percent agricultural growth during this year’s first quarter, as compared with -1.9 percent for the same period last year. We can contribute to sustaining this growth through private-sector monitoring of the DA budget. Actually, this is mandated by law through the government-private sector National Agricultural and Fisheries Council (NAFC). To fulfill this purpose, the NAFC’s budget committee was formed upon the Alyansa Agrikultura’s (AA) recommendation last April 12. However, this committee has yet to meet.

MAP-ABCD

Meanwhile, last June 7, the Management Association of the Philippines-Agribusiness and Countryside Development (MAP-ABCD), headed by Vic Amante, took the initiative in meeting Department of Agriculture officials on the largest DA budget component: irrigation.

He was accompanied by the heads of AA and the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Industries (PCAFI). Amante suggested a private-sector initiative called “Irrigation Watch.” Later that day, Secretary Alcala told me he fully supported this private initiative. In so doing, Alcala showed an admirable openness to budget monitoring sorely lacking in the previous administration.

Website posting

To start with, MAP-ABCD’s senior chair, Hector Quesada, will get from DA and NIA the list of each irrigation project funded this year with its location, approved budget and budget used to date. This will then be posted in the MAP-ABCD website (https://www.map-abcdf.com.ph/index.php), which is accessible to everyone. Farmer organizations, NGOs and interested parties can then monitor the progress of each irrigation project in their respective localities. They can then report anomalies to Secretary Alcala, with copies to MAP-ABCD, AA or PCAFI, for transparency purposes. The initial website posting is scheduled on or before July 5. We recommend DA do a similar posting in its own website.

The 2012 DA budget irrigation submission for 2012 is P30 billion compared with 2011’s P12.8 billion. Because of the large volume of irrigation projects in just one year, Emil Javier, Agriculture and Fisheries 2025 (AF 2025) Rice Task Force chairman, has cautioned that many of them may not have the necessary technical and financial feasibility studies. They may well become a source of waste and corruption.

Rolando Dy, AF 2025 Commercial Crops Task Force chairman, said that for these cases, the appropriate budgets should instead be reallocated to deserving sectors that show high returns on investment, and benefit many farmers. For example, coconut farmers outnumber rice farmers. But they are getting only P1.4 billion for 2012, as compared with the P49.5 billion for rice, which includes P30 billion for irrigation.

Recommendation

We recommend that the NAFC budget committee be immediately convened to discuss how the budget monitoring proposed in MAP-ABDCD Irrigation Watch can be replicated in other areas. The Regional Agricultural and Fisheries Councils, which used to get P1.5 million each for budget monitoring in the previous administration, are now deprived of this. The DA should quickly restore and expand this funding for monitoring activities like Irrigation Watch. Finally, the DA should optimally utilize the irrigation budget so that the best returns are gotten for each peso spent (e.g., in most cases, repair and restoration has five times the return of putting up a new system, so this should get priority). Since more water means more food, Irrigation Watch will certainly help in attaining food security.

(The author is chairman of Agriwatch, former secretary for presidential flagship programs and projects, and former undersecretary for agriculture, and trade and industry. For inquiries and suggestions, e-mail [email protected] or telefax 8522112.)