DA performance improved - survey

More and more businessmen think the agriculture department's performance is a lot better today than it was seven months ago. In fact, one of four businessmen (25 percent) believes the agency is doing a great job now, while only a few (16.7 percent) thinks so in the middle of last year.

These are some of the highlights of a survey done by the influential Makati Business Club (MBC), an organization of prominent businessmen and industrialists widely regarded to be the shakers and movers of the Philippine economy.

In its January 2000 Executive Outlook Survey, some 58.3 percent of the club membership headed by Ricardo J. Romulo, said they were satisfied with the way the Department of Agriculture is performing while only a third (33.3 percent) of them thought otherwise.

This gives the DA, headed by Secretary Edgardo Angara, a net satisfaction rating of 25 percent, the seventh highest among 32 government agencies in terms of performance.

This net rating accorded on agriculture surpassed the 18.3 percent net satisfaction rating given to the labor department, 14.2 percent to defense, and 5.8 percent to finance, three agencies which came eighth, ninth, and tenth, respectively, from the list.

The club gave Bangko Sentral its highest net satisfaction rating at 87.5 percent, followed by the National Economic and Development Authority at 42.5 percent, foreign affairs at 41.7 percent, trade and industry at 39.2 percent, Supreme Court at 30.8 percent, and social welfare at 28.3 percent.

While the DA's 25 percent net rating was seventh in the latest MBC survey, businessmen considered the agency's performance the fourth most improved. Back in its July 1999 poll, the same business group gave the agriculture department a 16.7 percent net rating, representing a 49.7 percentage point improvement in just seven months.

This almost 50 percent gain, is surpassed only by other significant improvements registered by the department of defense, labor and employment, and the Supreme Court, the survey showed.

Independent observers said last year's outstanding 6.5 percent growth of the farming and fishery sector and Angara's demonstrated ability to implement pro-agribusiness and pro-farmer pland and policies have greatly increased businessmen's positive perception of the Department of Agriculture.

Even the newly formed Chamber of Agriculture and Fisheries Inc. (CAFI), whose membership interlocks those of Makati Business Club's, says prospects of the farm and fishery sector look more promising now under the present leadership than they were one or two years ago.