(Eagle News)–Senator Kiko Pangilinan has called for a bigger budget for the agriculture department so the Philippines could compete with its rice-exporting neighbors.
Pangilinan made the call as he noted that Vietnam’s and Thailand’s annual budget for agriculture trumps the Philippines’ 2.45 billion USD annual agriculture budget.
Pangilinan said Vietnam’s 70.23 billion USD is over 28 times bigger and Thailand’s 1 trillion baht (or about 32.994 billion USD) is 13.44 times bigger based on Department of Agriculture data.
According to Pangilinan, increasing the agriculture budget will allow Agriculture Secretary Willliam Dar to meet his target of 2% agricultural growth by the end of the first year to ensure food security.
Farm output as of the 1st quarter of 2019, he said, stood at a “paltry” 0.67%.
He said invesyting in agriculture was also the key to eradicating poverty in the Philippines with “one in every five Filipinos lives in poverty — not eating enough, in poor health, living in abject conditions.”
“Ang kailangan ng mga magsasaka at mangingisda natin ay hindi dole-out, kailangan nila ng mas makabuluhang ayuda para maging mas productive at competitive,” Pangilinan said.
“This situation is unacceptable given that we are a country rich in natural resources and human talent,” he added.
