Secretary William Dar of the Department of Agriculture (DA) yesterday appealed to Congress to grant the agency’s request of a budget of P280 billion for next year to sustain, reboot and grow the sector amid the challenges brought by the pandemic.
“The agricultural sector contributes around 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product but the share it gets from the national budget for the past 10 years is a measly 3 to 5 percent of the total,” Dar told yesterday’s budget briefing of the House House committee on agriculture and food.
“I wish to underscore the need to ensure parity between the contribution of the sector to the economy and the resources that it gets from the national coffer. This, if we are to ensure that agriculture, being the sleeping giant as it is, can finally contribute its full potentials in the Philippine economic recovery and national development efforts,” Dar said.
The DA said the new coronavirus disease 2019 is impacting global food systems and disrupting agricultural value chains.
But Dar assured supply of agricultural commodities in the country is adequate.
He said ending rice inventory will be at 78 to 94 days at year’s end.
Dar is also confident the drastic fall in palay prices experienced last year will no longer occur this year as “we carefully manage rice supply and imports in the remaining months of 2020.”
The DA’s budget this year is at P64.7 billion, or less than a quarter of what the agency is asking for next year.
