Food production in the Cordillera is a high-value industry but also a risky venture because it needs reliable farm roads. —Richard Balonglong
MANILA, Philippines — A total of 51.8 percent of farm-to-market roads (FMR) have been completed since July of this year, a Department of Agriculture (DA) official said on Monday.
Agriculture Undersecretary for special concerns Jerome Oliveros revealed this during the House committee of appropriations hearing for the proposed budget of the DA.
Oliveros said that of the 131,410 kilometers (km) of FMRs targeted to be finished by the end of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration, around 68,122 kilometers have been built as of July 8.
In January this year, Marcos reported that the government has finished 67,328 km of FMRs so far.
READ: 51% of farm to market roads complete — Marcos
This means that there will be 794 km of FMRs built for around the first seven months of 2024.
However, Oliveros noted that there is still a backlog of 63,288 km of FMRs.
“We are very much aware that there are a lot of regions that would be in need of all these FMRs,” Oliveros told lawmakers. “In fact, it is one of those items in the budget that is in really high demand.”
”That is why we also appeal to Congress that now that we are here in the budget discussion, to increase the allocation so that we will be able to accommodate all the requests,” he added.
Oliveros said the DA applied a P26 billion budget for FMRs, but only P23 billion has been approved.
Meanwhile, DA chief Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. suggested that the width of the FMRs should be narrowed down so as to cover more areas.
He noted that the FMRs in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are not as wide as in the Philippines.
“Their FMR is not as big as ours. Ours is too wide. Sayang ang pera natin (It’s a waste of funds),” Laurel said.
To cover more area, he said that the FMRs should be narrowed down to three meters so the government could cover “50 percent more.”
“Once we achieve that, we could then widen it,” he said in Filipino. “That is the solution I see in order to achieve more in three and a half years.”