Original sugar sector fund sought
Credit to Author: EIREENE JAIREE GOMEZ| Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2019 16:17:01 +0000
To boost the country’s sugar sector, the Sugarcane Industry Development Act (SIDA) fund for 2020 may be reverted to its original amount of P2 billion following the yearly allocation cuts due to underutilization since its first year of implementation.
The Department of Budget and Management has slashed the P2-billion sugar fund to just P67 million for next year, citing that agencies involved in the use of the said fund have no capacity to fully spend their allocation.
For this year, SIDA’s allocation was at P500 million, a sustained decline from P1 billion in 2018, P1.5 billion in 2017 and P2 billion in 2016.
Enacted in 2015, SIDA aims to boost the production of sugarcane and sugar, and increase the income of sugarcane farmers or planters and farm workers, by which the law provides the allocation of P2 billion a year.
The bulk of SIDA’s annual fund or P1 billion should go to infrastructure for farm to mill roads; P300 million for credit; P300 million for block farm of the land reform beneficiaries; P300 million for shared facilities program; and P100 million for scholarships.
However, since its enactment, the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), the implementing agency, yielded to underspending of SIDA’s annual budget, which prompted for a review of the law.
In a senate hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Cynthia Villar grilled the SRA and other involved agencies, such as the Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) and the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC), for failing to fully utilize their budget allocation.
Villar, also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, got angry when she learned that the fund intended for the socialized credit program managed by LandBank was not utilized. At the same time, the intended funds for shared facilities program with PITC were not used.
“All of them [should be responsible]. The SRA was not really good and [other involved agencies] as well. They said they gave a certain amount to LandBank but [it] was not [fully] released [in loans]. They also alloted for the PITC the purchase of equipment, but failed to do so,” Villar explained.
The senator, however, said she was passionate to uplift the Philippine sugar industry, which is lagging behind from its counterparts in Thailand and other countries where sugar farmers are heavily subsidized by their government.
“What we can push in the budget hearing is to give them the P2 billion because that is the law. Now, they (national government) don’t like to give it because of underutilization,” Villar said. She expected that implementing agencies will reform its ways and systems.
During the hearing, SRA Administrator Hermenegildo Serafica said that in 2016, SRA only spent P914 million for infrastructure projects, P85 million for block farms, P48 million for socialized credit and about P90 million on scholarships.
In 2018, the utilization rate of SIDA fund was only at 66 percent with the lowest accomplishment rate, or 1 percent, noted in socialized credit, government data showed.
Disbursement to farm-to-mill road and infrastructure was at 82 percent; block farm at 78 percent; research, development and extension at 68 percent; and scholarships at an average of 91 percent.