NIA embarks on P25-B irrigation program

The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) is embarking on an ambitious P25-billion, three-year program starting in 2006 to rehabilitate the country’s major national and communal irrigation systems that would support government’s goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice by 2009.

"We are kicking off the rehabilitation program for national irrigation systems (NIS) and communal irrigation systems (CIS) this year with the initial P500 million that was already released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM)," NIA director Baltazar Usis.

Usis said that with most of the country’s critical NIS and CIS properly functioning, the government’s targeted rice self-sufficiency by 2009 is not too far-fetched.

"A big factor in the previous years’ failures to produce enough rice to meet the country’s growing rice requirements is that more than half of the irrigation systems built couldn’t be used during the planting season because so many of them have deteriorated due to lack of money for operation and maintenance especially when the communal irrigation systems were devolved to the local government units," said Usis.

A government-owned-and-controlled corporation, NIA does not receive subsidy from the government for its operations, thus, it uses internally generated income such as irrigation service fees and management fee. Its other sources of income include equipment rentals, pump amortization, sale of fixed assets and others. Only its NIS projects are given budget allocation through the general appropriations act.

He said that if properly implemented, NIA’s rehabilitation program for NIS and CIS would be the most practical and short-term response to increase productivity in rice farms.

The NIS which are under the jurisdiction of the NIA, are those with capacities capable of servicing more than 1,000 hectares of rice lands while the CIS are those with smaller capacities or below the coverage area of 1,000 hectares.

NIA data show that of the total 3.126 million hectares of rice lands nationwide, only 44.84 percent or 1.402 million hectares have functioning irrigation systems while about 1.724 million hectares have either defective irrigation systems or rely primarily on rainwater for their rice planting activities.

NIA assistant administrator Antonio Galvez said the P500 million recently released by the DBM will enable the agency to revive the identified priority NIS and CIS that would cover some 83,000 hectares this year.