By Butch Fernandez
SENATORS cited “weak” absorptive capacity, among the main reasons, for the agriculture sector’s reported failure to post a 3-percent growth under President Aquino despite Congress’s infusion of P400-billion funding for its annual budget from 2011 to 2016.
“We may have appropriated P400 billion, but I doubt that we spent it,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said in a text message to the BusinessMirror.
Recto pinned the blame partly on the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) inability to quickly disburse the yearly allocations approved by Congress to boost the agricultral sector’s growth.
“The absorptive capacity of the department is weak,” the Senate leader said.
Reacting to reports that among all economic sectors, only agriculture failed to post substantial growth of at least 3 percent during Mr. Aquino’s term, notwithstanding available funding support, Recto said that such funds be coursed directly to local governments.
“Future administrations should download resources to local government for faster absorption and spending,” he said.
Recto also suggested that the Land Bank of the Philippines, which was named the surviving entity in its recent merger with the Development Bank of the Philippines, should allocate more loans to the agriculture sector.
“Finally, we must find a way for greater private investments in agri and link it to industry,” the Senate president pro tempore added.
Sen. Sergio Osmeña III believes the problem lies with the chief implementer of the government’s agri-sector growth program, without specifying by name President Aquino’s Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala.
Asked what the government could do to effectively address the problem and prop up agri-sector growth, Osmeña replied: “We need a good manager who understands agricultural economics.”
Osmeña observed that “the current agriculture secretary should never have been appointed. His targets were populist, but wrong.”