By Catherine Talavera, The Philippine Star | September 16, 2021 | 12:00am
Agriculture Secretary William Dar wants the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) back under the Department of Agriculture (DA) in a bid to boost the development of irrigation systems in the country.
“We have a proposal, that if the President allows, to move the NIA under the DA because water is agriculture, agriculture is life,” Dar said in Filipino in an interview with ANC yesterday.
“You can find a number of justifications why it is necessary for the NIA to be part of the DA family,” he said.
The NIA was under the DA’s jurisdiction from October 1992 until it was transferred to the Office of the President in 2014.
Dar emphasized that the country has about 1.2 million hectares of rice land in the country that needs national irrigation system development.
“Having said that, at the rate the government has been investing in and supporting national irrigation systems development, it will take another 20 years before this 1.2 million hectares will be irrigated,” Dar said.
He has also suggested the idea of opening NIA up for public-private partnerships.
“As you have more private sector investing in the development of the national irrigation system, then you can enhance and not wait 20 years, but maybe the target for the next six years is the development of national irrigation systems,” Dar said.
NIA administrator Ricardo Visaya expressed support for Dar’s proposals.
“If it will serve the best interest of the agriculture sector and if it will be more advantageous to the farmers, so be it,” Visaya told The STAR in a text message.
For 2022, NIA’s proposed budget under the National Expenditure Plan (NEP) is P32 billion, nearly the same level as this year’s P32.4 billion.
The figure, however, is lower than the P39 billion budget proposed by the NIA for next year.
DA’s proposed budget for next year is P91 billion, 1.05 percent higher than this year’s P90.06 billion budget.
During the budget deliberations at the House of Representatives last week, Dar sought the support of lawmakers for an increase of at least P30 billion in the DA’s 2022 budget.