DA chief: FMRs safeguarded with flood control lessons
DEPARTMENT of Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said he has ‘instructed SRA Administrator Pablo Azcona to closely monitor local sugar refinery production and provide regular updates, so we maintain an accurate picture of our standard and premium grade refined stocks.’
Photo from Philippine News Agency.
Department of Agriculture (DA) secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. assured that the farm-to-market roads will not suffer the same fate as the flood control scandal.
“My name and the name of our president are at stake for this,” Tiu Laurel said in a press briefing with the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Thursday morning.
“The president's directive to me is clear: do it clean, do it fast,” he added, as the agency now holds the sole authority over the project.
The agency will be receiving P297.102 billion for 2026 and a portion of it will be used for the construction of the farm-to-market roads, which can help producers in selling their items quickly.
To ensure transparency with the projects, Tiu Laurel took pride in the monitoring system they built for the construction of the projects called FMR Watch, now in its beta version.
Fortunately, FMRs are released from its proponent, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), where some projects are flagged to be involved in widespread corruption, alongside ghost projects.
‘Benteng Bigas Meron na’ continues
Meanwhile, Tiu Laurel stated that the agency will continue to deliver the P20-priced rice in line with the promises of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. during the elections last 2022.
He explained that they allocated P5 billion for the project last year but only P700 million was utilized and for this year, their budget for the P20 rice ballooned to P14 billion, with hopes to serve almost 15 million Filipino families by the end of the year.
The agriculture chief also shared that they will be implementing the program in Pangasinan by 13 January 2026 as they are aiming to extend the service to a new province every week.
On irrigation
Tiu Laurel underscored irrigation as a problem that the country continues to face as 1.2 million hectares of land in the country needs it, while also stressing that former administrations ‘neglected’ our irrigation woes.
However, it will not be an easy task to solve as each hectare is priced at P1 million for improvement of the irrigation system.