Reactivation of food processing plant pressed

With food prices increasing due to the 12-percent expanded value added tax (EVAT), Agriculture Secretary Domingo Panganiban is pushing for the immediate reactivation of a big food processing plant in Ilocos Sur because of its "potential" in helping stabilize food prices.

Panganiban, who is leading efforts to maintain food prices at affordable levels, joined Ilocos tobacco farmers in their appeal for the release of the P300-million tobacco fund that will be utilized for the operation of the plant.

The DA chief said the Ilocos Sur Multiline Food Processing Plant can supply Metro-Manila and other areas with pork, chicken, tomato paste, banana and mango chips and vegetables.

The National Tobacco Administration (NTA), an agency attached to the DA, has taken over the management and operation of Multiline with Governor Luis "Chavit" Singson signing an agreement recently with Panganiban, NTA Administrator Carlitos Encarnacion and Carlos Cachola representing the tobacco farmers.

The provincial government owns the plant.

Cachola had appealed to President Arroyo to order the release of the P300-million NTA fund from the Department of Budget and Management. He said tobacco farmers suffered gravely when heavy rains that swept Northern Luzon last Jan. 25 destroyed their crop.

More than 2,000 hectares of tobacco farmlands in Ilocos Sur were hit by the rains which moved the provincial board to declare Ilocos Sur under a state of calamity.

"Sobrang malaki ang napinsala (There is too much damage)," Singson tiold newsmen yesterday.

Cachola who heads the Philippine Association of Tobacco-Based Cooperatives (PATCO) said their only chance to recover is for the DBM to release the NTA fund and have Multiline operations started.

Under the DA-NTA-Patco-Multiline agreement, the PATCO farmers will supply the plant with the raw materials that it needs for its operation.

The farmers will go into extensive hog and poultry production apart from raising vegetables, mangoes, bananas, and tomatoes.

They will be provided with production assistance and their produce will be purchased by NTA to sustain the plant’s requirements.

"The earlier (the release of the fund) the better it would be for the consuming public and the suffering tobacco farmers," Panganiban said.

Encarnacion said the awaited fund represents NTA’s share from the cigarette excise tax collections of the government.

He said the amount is mandated by RA 4155 which apportions part of cigarette tax payments to the then Philippine Virginia Tobacco Administration which is now the NTA.

NTA farm development manager Robert Bonoan said the NTA-Multiline operation will have a production of 200,000 kilos of hogs a month, 60,000 units of chicken, and so much vegetables that he said can supply 14 percent of Metro Manila’s requirements.

He said the project will beef up DA’s Pork-in-a Box trading activity apart from supplying DA’s linked-up Metro-Manila markets and Tindahan Natin outlets.