"We’ve presented our plan to repair our critical irrigation systems which we need to mobilize as part our contingency plans for the La Nina (weather phenomenon) and fortunately, the President (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) appreciated what the Department of Agriculture has to do," said Agriculture Secretary Domingo F. Panganiban.
The additional P1 billion asked by the DA will be used to construct small water impounding systems or catchment basins.
Panganiban said that these smaller infrastructures at a minimum cost of P15,000 each, will boost efforts to maximize gains from the La Niña because these facilities will help farmers in better water management. Rainfall water will be stored in these facilities and released to farm lands at the appropriate time.
Earlier, the DBM released P500 million of the P3.3 billion the DA requested as supplemental budget for this year. The amount will go into the rehabilitation of critical national irrigation systems (NIS) and communal irrigation systems (CIS) nationwide.
The NIS which are under the jurisdiction of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), are those with capacities capable of servicing more than 1,000 hectares of rice lands while the CIS are those with smaller capacities or below the coverage area of 1,000 hectares.
Panganiban wanted the DBM to release the funds early and mobilize NIA to fix these deteriorating irrigation systems during the rice planting season in the first quarter to boost efforts to increase rice production and reduce expensive rice imports programmed at 1.2 million metric tons this year.
"We have to put more sense in the national government‚s schedule of disbursements of agricultural funds," Panganiban said previously.
He noted that the inadequacy of funds for agriculture, is aggravated by the erroneous timing of disbursements of such funds, and considerably weakened the sector’s output.
While the money required is needed in the first quarter at the start of the planting season for rice, the DBM is usually late in releasing the budget, when planting should have been done and the yield, harvested.
It is also the best time to rehabilitate irrigation systems, especially for rice and corn.
NIA data show that of the total 3.126 million hectares of rice lands nationwide, only 44.84 percent or 1.402 million hectares have functioning irrigation systems while about 1.724 million hectares have either defective irrigation systems or rely primarily on rainwater for their rice planting activities.
With an improved irrigation network, it is hoped that government will be able to showcase the gains of pursuing its hybrid rice production program. Hybrid rice planting can yield as much as six metric tons per hectare, but only if there is an efficient irrigation system.
"A big factor in the previous years‚ failures to produce enough rice to meet the country‚s growing rice requirements is that more than half of the irrigation systems built couldn‚t be used during the planting season because so many of them have deteriorated due to lack of money for operation and maintenance especially when the communal irrigation systems were devolved to the local government units," said NIA Director Baltazar Usis.
He explained that the deteriorating conditions of existing irrigation systems is being caused by the lack of funds for operation and maintenance (O & M). The government only provides P1,126 per hectare for O&M, thus, there is a huge discrepancy of P1, 274 per hectare from the required ideal O&M budget of P2,400 per hectare.
On a larger scale, the NIA said earlier it would embark on an ambitious P25 billion, three-year program starting this year to rehabilitate the country‚s major national and communal irrigation systems to d support government’s goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice by 2009.