The government is taking agriculture and food production for granted. How else could the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) explain why only 3.2% of the proposed P6.4-trillion national budget will go to agriculture while the Department of Defense (DND) will have double the appropriations for the Department of Agriculture (DA.)
Number crunchers from the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said the proposed P211.3-billion appropriations for the DA is only 16.2% of the total infrastructure budget and just 24% of the mandatory allocation for interest payment for debt. To show just how serious budget planners are, the P211.3-billion set aside for the DA is only 42.26% of the original budget of P500 billion that the DA had proposed for next year. It means 57.74% of the proposed budget was eviscerated, transferred to other departments, or simply “realigned” to such entities as the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC.)
This represents a slaughter of the farming sector. It comes as Malacanang and the financial wizards of the bicameral committee are trying to promote the myth that the government wants irrigation services to be improved as the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) has not achieved an 80% accomplishment rate. They are also stumbling over each other and creating dogpiles as they vow to significantly reduce post-harvest losses by developing drying equipment and manufacturing better rice milling equipment to replace the rice mills still operating cono-type machinery.
In unloading his sentiments and dissing DA officials for not resisting the huge budget cuts, KMP chairperson Danilo Ramos howled: “Walong beses na malaki ang badyet ng imprastraktura kaysa sa agrikultura. Apat na beses na malaki ang badyet sa pagbabayad ng utang kaysa sa agrikultura. Paano mapapalakas ang lokal na produksyon kung pinababa na nga ang pondo sa agrikultura, hindi pa epektibo ang mga programa at patakaran ng DA.” The budgetary injustice, Ramos protested, is mirrored by the fact that debt interest payment for next year got ₱848 billion and infrastructure projects were allocated ₱1.4 trillion while the farming and agrarian sectors combined, will share a puny ₱225 billion of the budget.
The 2025 budget is an election year budget but the butchery has started by cutting back the DA budget and the Department of Finance (DOF) ordered PhilHealth to remit P89.9 billion of its “idle” funds to the national government to finance projects. These idle funds would in turn be plowed to certain projects that lawmakers have been pushing. Note that the contributions of PhilHealth were increased earlier this year presumably to make up for the loss of funds that would surely be shipped to parts unknown. Naturally, Finance Secretary Ralph Recto justified the “hijacking” of the money, saying it is “legal” ever if has the visage of a highly immoral filching of cash for the sick and the dying.
The bicameral committee annually crafts projects to be funded by unprogrammed money and it does add hundreds of billions of pesos for programs that we know will be financed by sequestered cash. The senators and congressmen who will benefit from the plunder will never be answerable for their misdeeds. Only hardworking taxpayers will be punished while the lawmakers get their commissions and filthy lucre for the midterm elections next year. The logical response to this daylight robbery is to ban the deployment of “unprogrammed funds” and limit the use of savings to the mandated programs and projects of each department. The pork barrel was supposed to have been thrown into oblivion but now we find its bloody shadow in the “unprogrammed funds” that get bigger and bigger each year.
Last year, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that the agriculture and fisheries sector registered more than 916,000 job losses, with El Nino and the importation policy being the culprits. Such a huge figure indicates that the DA and the government in its entirety should work double time to provide jobs to those who have been idled due to sheer incompetence of the DA and the insane import-based food security mantra of the regime. The much-ballyhooed Maharlika Investment Corp. (MIC) has not produced the billions of dollars of investments that the country requires. It created zero jobs after siphoning off the money of Landbank, Bangko Sentral, Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) and other government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs.)
KMP has condemned the government for treating the farm sector in a cavalier fashion. The 2025 budget is supposed to fund “Medium-Term Fiscal Programs including the creation of more and better jobs, reduction of poverty rate, reduction of debt and deficit gradually and realistically and, increasing people’s income. However, Marcos Jr.’s mid-term budget oozes with lard hidden in graft-ridden unprogrammed appropriations and budgetary items, it added. Instead of promoting DA programs that benefit farmers and fishermen, they will be slashing them. Regular DA programs like the Agriculture and Fishery Policy Program, Agriculture and Fishery Regulatory Support, Agricultural Machineries, Equipment and Facilities, National Livestock Program at National Corn Program will have their budgets cut in 2025. Only the Seed Fund and Livestock Promotion Fund will remain untouched. “Babawasan na nga ang badyet, mali pa ang mga prayoridad na programa at proyekto ng DA. Kaya anumang badyet na ilaan sa DA at mga ahensya nito ay hindi mamamaksimisa para sa tunay na pag-aangat ng agrikultura, lokal na produksyon, at pagtataas ng produktibidad ng mga magsasaka at mangingisda. Malala pa, nalulustay sa burukratikong korapsyon ang pondong pag-agrikultura, partikular ang pondo sa irigasyon,” Ramos concluded.
