By Lilybeth Ison/Philippine News Agency
MANILA — The Sugarcane Industry Development Act (SIDA) fund will be further slashed next year — from the original PHP2 billion annual budget down to only PHP67 million.
For this year, SIDA’s allocation was at PHP500 million.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) earlier said the budget cut was due to underutilization or underspending.
It believes that the agencies involved in the use of SIDA fund have no capacity to fully spend their allocation.
SIDA was created to boost the production of sugarcane and sugar, and increase the income of sugarcane farmers or planters and farm workers, for which the law provides the allocation of PHP2 billion a year.
Of the PHP2 billion annual fund of SIDA, some PHP1 billion should go to infrastructure for farm to mill roads; PHP300 million for credit; PHP100 million for scholarship; PHP300 million for block farm of the agrarian reform beneficiaries; and PHP300 million for shared facilities program.
“We have been often told that the only way for our sugar industry to be globally competitive is to improve our productivity for which the SIDA law was created so that we can mechanize, have technical and financial assistance and more,” Confederation of Sugar Producers (CONFED) spokesperson Raymond Montinola, said in a statement.
Montinola said underutilization of the fund has been the constant excuse to slash the budget “but the industry has very little to do with it.”
The Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) is set to come up with a strategic planning for SIDA alone to ensure prioritization of projects.
Stakeholders are also calling for the review of the law to determine its bottlenecks and see rooms for improvements.
“We have continuously urged to revisit the law, especially the implementing rules and guidelines which has been very constricting for the sugar producers to access, particularly the small planters and our agrarian reform beneficiaries which comprise over 85 percent of sugar producers, yet none has been made,” Montinola said.
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