Fisheries department needed to make local aquaculture a powerhouse

MANILA, Philippines — The creation of a separate fisheries department will propel the growth of the industry and make the Philippines one of the world’s aquaculture powerhouse.

Senator Francis Pangilinan has refiled Senate Bill 32 calling for the creation of the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR) emphasizing that oceans and seas make up 80 percent of the country’s territory and produce 4.31 million metric tons of fisheries worth P243.9 billion.

The proposed measure stressed the need to have an agency that will look after the welfare of the country’s 1.6 million Filipinos who depend on fisheries and aquaculture for livelihood, as well as oversee the country’s 2.2 million square kilometers of territorial waters. “Other countries pale in comparison to the wealth of our waters. But why do our fishermen continue to be among the poorest? We want to have a department that will focus on and address the obstacles to our fishermen earning enough, including illegal fishing of foreigners on our seas,” he said.

Citing the Philippine Statistics Authority, Pangilinan said poverty incidence continues to remain high among fishermen at about 34 percent in 2015, higher by 12.4 percent than the poverty incidence of the general population.

Over the years, the budget of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources has been a small fraction of the total budget of the Department of Agriculture, BFAR’s parent agency.

“In the 2019 budget, BFAR’s budget is only one-eighth of the total DA budget. That means that only one peso of every eight pesos goes to the sector that covers 80 percent of our territory. Shouldn’t the size of budget match better the size of our territory,” Pangilinan said.

This year, BFAR was given P5.758 billion of DA’s P47.293 billion allocation.
“Four-fifths of our territory is ocean waters and marine resource-rich yet the DA budget allocates only one-eighth of its budget to fisheries. The lopsided misallocation must be corrected,” he said.