The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) said its proposed budget for 2018 was slashed by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) by nearly a quarter, from P56.95 billion to P45.8 billion.
Despite the 24.34-percent cut, NIA’s budget was still 19.36 percent higher than the agency’s allocated funding for this year of P38.37 billion. NIA Administrator Ricardo R. Visaya said the P2-billion allocation for implementing the government’s free irrigation service is already part of the P45.8-billion initial budget recommendation by the DBM.
“Right now, we want to triple [the allocation for projects] to hasten the construction of our dams. We still have about 41 percent irrigation areas to be developed and we would like to fast-track the development of these areas so we will triple that to about P36 billion, which will be used for projects for 2018,” Visaya told reporters at a news briefing on Wednesday.
In 2017 NIA was allocated P12.72 billion for its projects component, he added. If the P45.8-billion proposed budget will be approved by Congress, then this will be highest budget that NIA would be receiving, according to Visaya.
Data from NIA showed there are still still 1.27 million hectares to be serviced nationwide, or 49 percent of the 3.12 million hectares total irrigable land. At present, NIA hectares developed 1.85 million hectares of irrigable areas in the country.
Visaya said the NIA is eyeing to irrigate all irrigable areas in the country before President Duterte steps down from office in 2022. He added that this would be possible if the government will continue to increase NIA’s budget from 19 percent to 20 percent annually.
“We are planning to reach that by 2022. Hopefully, the increase in our budget would be continuous, as well as the improvement of modern equipment and additional manpower,” Visaya said.
The NIA chief said one of the woes he has encountered is the hiring of highly skilled personnel and repair and restoration of irrigation systems. “The restoration part is really hard because there are dams that are destroyed. Then, you have natural calamities, which is a threat,” Visaya said.
“Another problem is that we are finding hard time in recruiting highly skilled personnel, because we have not yet implemented our salary standardization. That’s thing we are working out to attract the personnel we want,” Visaya added.
The NIA chief also said he is hoping the current P2-billion subsidy for the irrigation services fees would increase to expand the coverage of the government’s free irrigation program.
“It’s still P2 billion next year. We want it higher so that we can support also the communal irrigation [CI] systems,” he said. “Meaning, the areas wherein the area being irrigated is less than 1,000 hectares. I hope the budget would still increase so that we can support the CIs.”
Visaya didn’t disclose any figure when asked how much additional funding would NIA be needing to cover also CIs in the free irrigation scheme.
For this year, NIA is targeting to develop 23,115 of new irrigation areas and restore 13,507 more.
“NIA also targets repair and rehabilitation works including 249 kilometers (km) of earth canal, 1,133 km of concrete lined canal, 3,454 canal structures, 66-km HDPE Pipe, 344.906 square meter coconet, 19-km concrete roads and 67-km gravel roads,” he said.
“The program will benefit approximately 24,000 farmers and wil generate 145,000 jobs,” he added.