• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Members of the House committee on agriculture and food are unanimous in seeking the restoration of the P2-billion budget for the Sugar Industry Development Act (SIDA) of 2015 in the proposed P6.3-trillion national government budget for 2025.
Quezon First District Rep. Wilfrido Mark Enverga, the committee chairman, presided over the public hearing on the proposed amendments in the said law held in Talisay City, Negros Occidental as facilitated by Third District Rep. Jose Francisco Benitez yesterday.
He admitted that it would be much difficult to lobby for the P5 billion budget for the SIDA being pushed by sugar industry stakeholders, given the issues on the absorptive capacity of the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) to implement its programs.
Under the proposed national budget for 2025, an amount of P1 billion has been allocated for the implementation of the SIDA law.
“If we will be able to resolve this in the public hearing, as well as on the proposed amendments of the SIDA law, I think it would help us justify to the Department of Budget and Management the need for us to improve, or even increase the allocations for SIDA,” he added.
The committee hearing deliberated House Bill (HB) 835 or An Act Strengthening the Sugarcane Industry, Increasing its Annual Supplemental Budget, and For Other Purposes, and HB 2207, an Act Amending Section 11 of Republic Act 10659 or SIDA of 2015.
Also present were Negrense representatives Emilio Bernardino Yulo, Mercedes Alvarez, Greg Gasataya, Stephen Joseph Paduano, Manuel Sagarbarria, SRA Administrator Pablo Luis Azcona, and leaders of various sugar federations.
The SIDA aims to increase production efficiency in sugarcane farms and sugar mills through research and technological innovation, infrastructure and human resource development.
As reported by the SRA in previous hearings, however, the implementation of the programs, except the hard infrastructure, has been slow and with limited impact, Enverga said.
Among the issues and concerns raised in the three public hearings include SRA’s low absorptive capacity and under utilization of SIDA fund, delays in the memorandum of agreement preparation and project implementation due to concerns in the conduct of bidding, harmonization of the importation data of Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Internal Revenue and SRA, and lack of personnel, he noted.
Yulo, who used to be a member of the SRA Board, also joined the call of the industry stakeholders to increase the SIDA budget, stressing that the amount of projects implemented five to 10 years ago have already increased.
The SIDA mandates an annual allocation of P2 billion for the sugar industry’s productivity improvement programs as follows: 50 percent for infrastructure support; 15 percent for grants to block farms; 15 percent for socialized credit for farm support and farm mechanization programs; 15 percent for research and development, capability building and technology transfer activities; and 5 percent for scholarship grants.
Regarding the under utilization of the SRA budget, Yulo said that during his stint with the SRA, there was no problem in the implementation of farm to mill roads and scholarship programs, except for the block farms and the procurement process.
He pointed out that the SRA has always been an agency regulatory body, but never a developmental agency, and has personnel for managing developmental projects.
Yulo pushed for the creation of a separate entity, such as the Project Management Office, specifically to manage the SIDA projects.
Meanwhile, Azcona said that the P2- billion budget of SIDA has a limited coverage for a big industry.
One of the biggest problems is the block farming, where SRA is allowed to organize only 20 to 40 block farms, with a budget of P5 million, for its working capital, tractors and fertilizers, he added.
Azcona said that the processing, especially of socialized credits, is now being streamlined as the Land Bank of the Philippines is very helpful to them.
During the public hearing, the National Federation of Sugarcane Planters, Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations, Panay Federation of Sugarcane Farmers and the Philippine Sugar Millers Association submitted a joint proposal which contains measures to improve farm productivity and mill efficiency.
The measures call for amendments to the SIDA, particularly an increase in the annual funding from P2 billion to P5 billion, the creation of a dedicated SRA-SIDA Program Management Structure focused on the implementation of SIDA-mandated programs, and the institutionalization of the Stakeholders’ Consultative Assembly and Sugar Industry Development Council. | GB
