DA chief loses another agency

President Arroyo has further emasculated Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor in the latest reorganization of agencies attached to his office.

The President issued Executive Order (EO) No. 76 last March 4, transferring the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) from the Department of Agriculture to the Office of the President (OP), the fourth agency to be taken away from Montemayor.

In putting Philrice directly under her supervision, the President invoked her continuing authority under the Administrative Code of 1987 to reorganize the administrative structure of the Office of the President.

The President had earlier transferred one after the other the National Food Authority (NFA) and the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) from the DA to the OP, and the Philippine Crop Insurance Corp. to the Department of Finance.

The control and supervision of NFA and PCA had been delegated by the President to Presidential Adviser for Agricultural Modernization Angelito Sarmiento.

In transferring Philrice to the OP, Mrs. Arroyo cited her desire to ensure the full implementation of the hybrid rice program which her administration developed.

Under the hybrid rice program, hybrid rice planting targets shall cover 135,000 hectares for year 2002; 200,000 hectares in the year 2003; and 300,000 hectares in the year 2004 in the major irrigated rice-producing provinces in the country.

To ensure the attainment of these targets, the President directed the agriculture secretary, under EO 76, to allocate and "realign" the amount of P450 million from his department’s Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization Program budget as funding support for this year.

The President said Philrice was established to develop, in coordination with the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, Laguna a national rice research program to achieve the long-cherished goal of making the Philippines self-sufficient in rice production.

Mrs. Arroyo justified anew her earlier decision to transfer the three agencies — NFA, PCA and PCIC — to the OP, saying that these agencies were merely restored to their original mandates.

"The span of control and scope of the (agriculture secretary) have been expanded too much. So I returned these agencies back to their original offices," she pointed out.

In her first State of the Nation Address in Congress, Mrs. Arroyo had said she would directly run the P10-billion a year agricultural and fishery modernization program required by law.