Budget crunch forces DA to reduce rice production target

The government’s budget deficit has prompted the Department of Agriculture (DA) to scale down its much-vaunted Ginintuang Masaganing Ani (GMA) or GMA Rice Program which is supposed to increase this year’s rice production yield and bring the country to a rice self-sufficiency level of 97 percent.

GMA director Francisco Malabanan said in a press briefing that out of the P550 million allocated for the rice program this year, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has released P181 only million so far.

The balance of P369 million is supposed to be paid to local hybrid rice seed growers contracted by the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) to supply the high-yielding hybrid rice seeds that will be distributed to farmers at the subsidized rate of P1,200 per 20-kilogram bag.

As a result, the DA was forced to trim this year’s rice production target to a range of 14.03 million to 14.26 million metric tons (MT).

Malabanan said this is the first time that the DA is revising its rice production target. The new figure is 640,000 to 840,000 MT lower than the original production target of 14.9 million MT. In 2003, rice production totaled 13.49 million MT.

He said payment delays have discouraged hybrid rice seed growers from supplying Philrice and this could further set back government’s efforts to attain self-sufficiency in rice.

Next year, Malabanan said the rice production target was placed at 15.07 million MT or a 97-percent self-sufficiency.

"It is still a 97-percent self-sufficiency level even with the higher production because we had to factor in the annual population growth of two percent," Malabanan said.

"But without a corresponding budget, the DA will be hard-pressed to meet its targets," added Malabanan.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said that under the revised target, the country is looking at a 93-to 94-percent rice self-sufficiency.

Yap refused to admit that the setback in the GMA rice production program was due to budgetary constraints.

The government is encouraging the use of the higher-yielding hybrid rice seeds which could reach as high as 12 MT per hectare compared to the average yield of only 3.5 MT per hecrare using traditional rice seeds.

Malabanan said because of inadequate funds to bankroll the program only 125,000 hectares have been planted to higher-yielding hybrid rice seeds out of the targeted 230,000 hectares.

Earlier, Leocadio Sebastian, executive director of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) said the original target of 230,000 hectares for the wet cropping season from May to October this year, may have to be downsized to just 150,000 hectares based on the government’s current distribution rate of hybrid rice seeds.

He said Philrice has so far farmed out only 150,000 bags of hybrid seeds to different rice-producing areas in the country. Each 20-kilo bag is just enough to seed one hectare of rice field.