The recent signing by President Rodrigo Duterte of the Free Irrigation Service Act (Republic Act No. 10969) is a classic example of violation of the good-management rule that a problem, once determined, must be quickly addressed in order to prevent the delay or cessation of the project or program to which the problem relates. Everyone, economists and non-economists alike, know that the inadequacy of water for farms has been largely to blame for the sustainedly poor performance of Philippine agriculture – and, by extension, the Philippine economy – but only with the passage of R.A. No. 10969 has remedial official action been taken.
The Congressional hearings that preceded the passage of R.A. No. 10969 – Senator Ralph Recto deserves special mention for his effective participation therein – abundantly brought out the fact that the main culprit was the legislature’s repeated failure to fund the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) adequately and the fact that NIA’s finances were gravely weakened by the huge amount of irrigation service fees unpaid by farmers. One of the new law’s principal provisions is the condonation of all unpaid irrigation service fees.
Mr. Recto and the other Congressional supporters of the Free Irrigation Service Act recognized that no change in the national irrigation situation could take place if the Commission on Audit (COA) and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) continued to insist on NIA’s collection of the unpaid irrigation service fees. The choice facing the government, they argued, was between practicality – enabling the nation’s farmers to be more productive – and the requirements of COA and DBM. Practicality won.
Having relieved the delinquent farmers of the burden of paying their unpaid irrigation service fees, R.A. 10969 proceeded to grant free irrigation to farmers growing food on farms up to 8 hectares in size. The irrigation service fee used to be 2 cavans per hectare during the wet season and 3 cavans per hectare during dry season.
The House of Representatives had wanted to grant free irrigation to all food-growing farms; the Senate wanted to limit the benefit to farms of 5 hectares or less.
A government policy of giving free irrigation services to food-growing farms has a long, long way to go. The Congressional hearings brought out the fact that of the nation’s 3 million hectares of irrigable land only 1.7 million hectares are irrigated. A very large backlog 1.3 million hectares is.
The 2018 budget of the Department of Agriculture includes a P2.67 billion appropriation for the improvement, restoration or construction of small-scale irrigation facilities. Is the government’s incremental investment in irrigation likely to be worth it? The agricultural experts who testified before the Congressional committees unanimously gave an affirmative answer. With irrigation, the average 6-tons-per-hectare production of Philippine farms could easily rise to 8.3 tons.
Such growth in productivity, if achieved on a wide scale, will sharply reduce the need for food imports and put an end to the Philippines’ long reign as the world’s No. 1 rice importer.
The final word on this subject has to be one of caution. A rural and local-government-influenced program such as free irrigation service lends itself to corruption and political motivations. One can only hope that NIA and its mother institution, the Department of Agriculture, will take effective measures to ensure that only its intended beneficiaries benefit from the program.
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