Oriental Mindoro gets P17-M shrimp hatchery
CITY OF CALAPAN – Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary William Dar inaugurated on Friday, September 24, the 17 million worth shrimp hatchery located in Bongabong town in Oriental Mindoro.
The Mindoro Shrimp Hatchery is the first of its kind in the country, according to Dar.
“This is a historic occasion for Oriental Mindoro because this is the first-ever shrimp hatchery in the country and the province will be the home for shrimp industry,” said Dar at the event which was live-streamed online.
At the inauguration, the memorandum of agreement for the creation of the Oriental Mindoro Agriculture and Fisheries Extension System (OrMAFES) was also signed between the DA and the local government unit.
DA also handed over P279 million worth of interventions to the agriculture and fishery sectors of the province.
OrMAFES is under the DA’s province-led Agriculture and Fishery Extension Systems (PAFES) that is created to ensure that DA’s strategy in reforming the agri-fishery sector is sustained even when the Supreme Court’s Mandanas-Garcia ruling is fully implemented.
The OrMAFES hopes to strengthen and synergize the different stakeholders in the sector.
According to the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) website, the Mandanas-Garcia ruling resulted from the petition made by Batangas Governor Hermilando Mandanas and former Bataan Governor Enrique Garcia Jr. before the Supreme Court on local government shares on internal revenue allotment (IRA).
“According to the petitioners, LGU shares should include all national taxes. The Supreme Court affirmed that local government units are entitled to a “just share” on all national taxes collected and not only from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR),” the DILG explained.
At present, LGU’s IRA comes from 40 percent of national internal revenue taxes collected by the BIR.
With the Mandanas-Garcia ruling implementation in 2022, it is projected that LGUs will have a 27.61 percent increase in the total IRA shares.
