Huge agriculture budget in MM raises suspicions

CLARK FREEPORT – The Anakpawis party list questioned yesterday the P3.2 billion 2016 budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA) for “production support services (PSS)” for the National Capital Region (NCR), a region that is largely non-agricultural.

Anakpawis Rep. Fernando Hicap said “this kind of budgeting is highly suspicious as the funding that should go to the regional units is concentrated at the central office and very much subject to the discretion of the department secretary.”

He noted that under the 2016 National Expenditure Program, the DA is proposing a P3.268-billion PSS budget for its National Rice Program (NRP), National Livestock Program and National Corn Program.

“Six percent of the said budget, or P211 million, will go to the DA’s central office located in the NCR, an amount bigger than what is allotted for Bicol (P179.702 million), Mimaropa (P154.462 million), Zamboanga Peninsula (P128.904 million), Northern Mindanao (P 114.612 million), Cordillera (P113.995 million), Central Visayas (P97.284 million), Davao (P73.684 million), Caraga (P70.803 million), and Calabarzon (P42.126 million),” he said.

Hicap also noted that “out of the P450 million proposed PSS budget for the National Livestock Program, the DA’s central office will also get P55.3 million or 12 percent of the total budget on top of P94 million or 16 percent of the total P574 million PSS budget for the National Corn Program.”

“It is hard to justify the bigger budget of the central office as we all know that production is in our agricultural regions and not in Quezon City.

There are no vast palay and corn farm lands nor are there any significant productive livestock activities in the NCR,” Hicap said.