MANILA – The Department of Agriculture on Thursday said total crop damage in the Philippines as a result of El Niño is now at P1.3 billion, lower than the P2.6 billion estimate given by disaster officials.
Agriculture secretary Manny Piñol said the DA computation factors in insurance policies for farmers. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council earlier said the P2.6 billion estimate is based on crop damage figures given by local government units.
Piñol warned damage reports could be inflated so that calamity funds could be used for political purposes.
“Sabi ko sa mga staff ko – let’s be careful with the numbers coming from the local government units. You have to understand na malapit na ang election at pwede mong gamitin ‘yung calamity fund for political purposes and you can justify that by issuing a huge damage report,” he said.
“Yung P2.8 billion na nabasa ko sa dyaryo pinapa-validate namin because as far as we are concerned in our last collation of data ang total damage is P1.3 billion. We’re not saying it’s inaccurate. What we’re saying is we need to validate this,” Piñol said.
Measures to help farmers are currently in place including the use of solar-powered irrigation system. However, the implementation “is not as fast as we would like because of lack of funding,” he said.
Meanwhile, the implementing rules and regulations of the Rice Tarrification Law could be presented to the Cabinet for signing by April 1, Piñol said. Importers are still operating under the current quota basis since the IRR has not been finalized, he said. (ABS-CBN News)
