The House of Representatives’ appropriations committee shot down a proposal for an P18-billion kitty for the Department of Agriculture’s national rice program and also left the department’s budget for 2017 lower than this year’s.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said he was sad about this but not complaining.
Piñol said the committee approved an allocation of P50.6 billion, P3.4 billion less than the P54 billion earmarked for 2016.
Even then, he said the budget hearing “went through smoothly” and was over after about four hours.
The amount approved “was not exactly what I asked for from the Department of Budget and Management but given the fact that it was the amount approved, I have to work with it,” he said.
Piñol explained that the approved amount conformed to the budget ceiling recommended by the finance team of the Cabinet.
“The finance team could not entirely be blamed too because they based the budget ceiling of each department on the absorption rate and expenditure efficiency of each department,” he said.
“The DA under the previous administration was not able to absorb and spend all of its money,” he added. “In fact, when I took over, about P7 billion was left unspent in the 2015 budget.”
Piñol lamented the non-approval of an initiative he dubbed Rice Productivity Enhancement (RIPE), which called for an P18 billion additional budget for 2017.
He said RIPE was intended to help rice farmers affected by the El Niño to recover from its effects by giving them rice seeds and fertilizers.
He said he had met with the top officials of the department to discuss what should be done in the face of the “trimmed” budget and the non-approval of the RIPE.
“We cannot sulk in disappointment simply because we did not get what we were asking for,” he said. “This is a challenge for us to think of other ways to achieve food sufficiency.”