President Duterte has vowed to allocate an additional P4 billion to the National Irrigation Administration’s (NIA) 2017 allocation to subsidize the fees paid by small farmers for irrigation services, Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said.
“In the last Cabinet meeting on Monday, August 22, President Duterte has confirmed his commitment of free irrigation for the country’s millions of rice farmers starting the first planting season in 2017. An allocation of P4 billion will be included in the NIA budget for 2017 to cover the ISF [irrigation-service fees] collections,” Pinol said on his Facebook page.
The ISF are charges collected by the NIA from farmers as payment for the services rendered in the delivery of water for their irrigation, according to NIA.
Piñol said only the small farmers shall benefit from the P4-billion subsidy, while corporate farms using the services of the NIA will still have to pay for their own irrigation requirements.
Piñol also said Sen. Loren Legarda, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Karlo Nograles, chairman of the House Appropriations Commitee, supported the President’s order to free irrigation.
Mr. Duterte, even before elected President, has promised that small farmers should get free irrigation from the government in order to boost their productivity.
However, there have been opposition to the proposal, particularly from the NIA, saying the agency depends on the collected ISF, which amounts to around P3 billion to P4 billion a year, to pay for the salaries and wages of the agency’s officials and personnel.
“Of the total irrigation fees paid by the rice farmers every harvest, 60 percent goes to the National Irrigation Administration as ISF, which is used to pay for the salaries and wages of the agency’s officials and employees,” Piñol said on his Facebook post dated August 2.
The proposed budget for NIA for 2017 will increase to P40.4 billion from P36.4 billion, given the additional P4-billion budget allocation. The House Committee on Appropriations is set to deliberate on the budget of the Department of Agriculture today.