MORE than half of the Philippines’ potential irrigable farmlands or 1.69 million hectares do not have irrigation and the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) estimates that it would take billions of pesos to provide irrigation to all these areas.

NIA administrator Marcelino Tugaoen said in an interview that the 1.43 million hectares have been irrigated in the last 45 years.

“If we will develop new areas, it would take us a number of years and would be very expensive. Our priority is to increase production areas,” said Tugaoen in a phone interview.

Based on figures from the NIA as of December 31, 2007, irrigation in large tracts of farmlands in major rice-producing areas have yet to be developed. In Region III, considered the rice granary of the country, NIA data show that 229,627 hectares of potential area have yet to be developed.

In Region II or the Cagayan Valley, 273,201 hectares have yet to be developed. In Region XII, or Soccsksargen, 209,548 hectares do not have irrigation.

Of the 1.43 million hectares that were already irrigated, 706,377 hectares were irrigated by national irrigation systems, 554,020 hectares by communal irrigation systems, and 174,200 hectares by private irrigation systems.

“Irrigating the remaining farmlands will depend on the priority of the government. It took 45 years to irrigate the existing farmlands that were already irrigated. It may take 50 more years if we will rehabilitate all the potential areas that need to be developed,” said Tugaoen.

The priority right now, he said, is the repair and rehabilitation of existing irrigation systems since this is cheaper than constructing new ones.

For 2008, Tugaoen disclosed the NIA was allotted P2.605 billion to repair and rehabilitate 84,000 hectares consisting mostly of rice farmlands in 37 rice-producing areas in the country. The NIA chief said the move is part of efforts to prop up palay production in the Philippines.

THE country’s export earnings in February continued to increase and posted a year-on-year growth of 10.7 percent, according to the latest data released by the National Statistics Office (NSO) on Thursday.

THE Australian government has expressed hopes that the free-trade agreement (FTA) with New Zealand and the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will be signed within this year to facilitate trade growth in the region and remove trade and nontrade barriers.

MORE than half of the Philippines’ potential irrigable farmlands or 1.69 million hectares do not have irrigation and the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) estimates that it would take billions of pesos to provide irrigation to all these areas.

FRUIT and vegetable farming for Crispolo Galasa, 47, is an annual activity. The time to plant, harvest or \change the crops has been an agenda he knows by heart. All of a sudden, however, the whole schedule is in shambles.

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SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—A medical and wellness facility, complete with diagnostic, surgical and therapeutic wards, opened here on Tuesday to offer both out-patient and surgery services to customers in the Subic Bay area and the rest of Luzon.

THE ripple effect created by the government’s biggest tourism-development project, the Bagong Nayong Pilipino-Manila Bay Tourism City, would extend beyond the local hospitality industry and long after the year 2010, when locators in the project are expected to become fully operational.

SENATE President Manuel Villar Jr. is set to ask the Inter-Parliamentary Union IPM to use its collective clout in calling worldwide attention to the plight of countries encumbered by external debts and set in motion renewed efforts to push for “moratorium, condonation, or any other financial arrangements that enable debt-burdened countries to survive and rise again.”