Agri needs to grow 3-4% yearly to alleviate poverty – Balisacan

MANILA, Philippines - Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said the agriculture sector must grow at an annual average of three to four percent in the next two decades to hit poverty alleviation is one of the targets under the Philippine Development Program (PDP) and the Medium Development Goals (MDG).

“At that rate, we would be able to reduce poverty,” Balisacan said.

In the first semester of 2015, the sector grew a mere 0.7 percent. Previously, it expanded 4.8 percent in the last quarter of 2014.

The agriculture sector employs a third of the country’s entire workforce, yet it is barely growing 1.7 percent annually.

Likewise, the series of massive natural disasters accounted for P200 billion worth of agriculture losses since 2000.

This year, the El Niño weather phenomenon once more threatens the sector’s growth.

Another external condition that concerns Balisacan is the quantitative restrictions (QR) on rice production. Rice is the only Philippine agricultural product still under the QR state until 2017.

Balisacan said the rice market needs to enter the tariff environment, which will make the rice market more predictable, transparent, market trending, and advantageous to the farmer.

By 2017, prices of rice will rise roughly 40 percent higher than the existing rates.

“We should take advantage (of the two year period) to prepare that sector. We have been and will continue to invest on increasing the sector’s competitiveness, including linking our farmers to the global supply chain,” Balisacan, who is also director general of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), said.

The share of the agriculture sector to overall economic development declined from 20 percent in the 1970s to just 10 percent last year.