ARMM's agri dept bats for Congress approval of P430-M budget

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - The Agriculture Department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is banking on its proposed P430 million budget for 2015 to sustain more projects needed to hasten the restoration of normalcy in conflict and calamity-stricken areas in ARMM’s five component provinces.

Congress is presently deliberating on the ARMM’s P25-billion budget for next year.

Makmod Mending Jr., regional secretary of the ARMM’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF), said P105 million from their P430-million 2015 budget is intended for maintenance and other operating expenses.

He said the remaining P230 million is earmarked for salaries of employees assigned in the regional office of DAF-ARMM and those in the provinces.

For most DAF-ARMM employees, their 2015 budget is still small if they are to maximize community interventions needed to hasten the recovery of peasant communities from conflicts and calamities.

Mending, however, said they just have to enforce stringent measures in the handling of state funds to ensure the continuity of socio-economic programs complementing the establishment before 2016 of a new Bangsamoro government to replace ARMM.

The creation of the Bangsamoro government through the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law, which is now in Congress, is part of a political deal stipulated in the March 27, 2014 peace accord between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Mending said they are thankful to two outfits of the United Nations (UN), the World Food Program and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Office, for continuously assisting the ARMM government in its agricultural programs for underdeveloped Moro communities in the region.

“We are now doing the necessary groundwork needed to prepare the Moro, Christian and lumad agricultural sectors for the coming in of the Bangsamoro government,” Mending said.

He said P10 billion of the ARMM’s proposed P25 billion 2015 budget is, in fact, intended for infrastructure projects designed to generate livelihood opportunities for rebels that will gradually decommission once the Bangsamoro government is in place.

DAF-ARMM is one of the ARMM’s five busiest and top performing agencies in the ARMM, which include the region’s public works, health, education and social welfare departments.