THE Department of Agrarian Reform is seeking a lower budget of P10.144 billion for 2017, or smaller than its budget appropriation in 2016, representing a 2.4-percent slash from this year’s P10.4 billion to P10.144 billion.
DAR Secretary Rafael Mariano credited the budget cut to the marked decrease in the maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) allocation, down from P6.4 billion this year to P4.3 billion next year.
He told Congress the decrease in the MOOE budget is caused by reductions in cost parameters and targets for land tenure services, agrarian legal services and the completion of two foreign-assisted projects.
“The budget needs to be exact to eliminate corruption,” he said.
Meanwhile, despite an 88.6- percent land distribution or 5,415,000 hectares of farm lots under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, Mariano is asking why farmers are still poor.
“More than 28 years have passed after the implementation of CARP, still, there are no indications that the life of the Filipino tenant-farmer has improved,” he lamented.
Amid the distribution of 5,415,000 hectares, Mariano remained skeptical about how the program was implemented.
He expressed dismay that the agriculture and agrarian reform sectors have remained the lowest contributor to the country’s gross domestic product at only 9.49 percent in the first quarter of 2016.
DAR has yet to fully investigate the ramifications of why farmers are still poor despite the large coverage of agrarian reform.
According to Mariano, the Philippines is one of the biggest net importers of food products of $1 billion annually.
“This [problem] has been compounded by land conversion, which has resulted in decreasing agricultural lands, which in turn has adversely affected our food security,” he said.
Based on field reports, farmers’ cooperatives are being “duped” by former landowners into forming business ventures that have only worsened the economic condition of these farmers.
One glaring case, he said, is the business venture offered by Hacienda Luisita Inc. to its farmers.
“Only the landowner profited from this arrangement. They were not only compensated, but they also profited from the business venture,” he added.
The agrarian chief blamed the collusion between and among landlord oligarchs why farmer-beneficiaries of CARP have not improved their lives.
“At the end of the day we will go back to the issue of oligarchy and why there is a need for a genuine Agrarian Reform Law,” he said.