DA: Erring farm-to-market road projects came from NEP, not HGAB

The Department of Agriculture (DA) clarified on Wednesday that the farm-to-market road (FMR) projects that were flagged by civil society organizations did not come from amendments made by Congress and were instead included in the budget proposal of the executive.

U-Nichols Manalo, an assistant secretary from the DA, explained that there were a total of eight FMR projects which were found to have incorrect coordinates out of the 1,669 roads that the department sought funding for in 2027.

The finding reportedly arose after a consultation with the People’s Budget Coalition after a committee hearing that was conducted at the Senate with respect to its P198.45 million proposed budget.

Manalo said that there may have been errors during the encoding or geotagging of the sites of the projects, but wished to clarify that the eight FMRs did not come from amendments by the House of Representatives.

“We’d like to inform the committee that the list or the 1,669 FMR projects are within the NEP, it did not come from what we call as inserted farm-to-market road projects,” he said during a House Committee on Agriculture and Food.

The assistant secretary would point out, however, that the main challenge when it came to incorrect mapping was that it was unlikely that the projects could still be properly funded and implemented in the coming year.

“The only problem is since it was already in the NEP, we will be losing that eight farm-to-market road projects because we cannot implement it because of what happened in the encoding,” Manalo explained.

Amid the identified issues, Manalo said that agriculture secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel had handed down instructions for the department to review all FMR projects to ensure that there were no other anomalies.

‘Blown out of proportion’

Camarines Sur Rep. Arnie Fuentebella, a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, welcomed the clarification on the part of the DA, asserting that issues pertaining to FMRs had been seemingly “blown out of proportion.”

“But, only eight out of [1,669 projects] was already blown out proportion. It appeared that the budget and all coordinates of farm-to-market roads were incorrect,” Fuentebella expressed.

The lawmaker likewise pointed out that it was not necessarily too late to make changes to the budget in order to cater to the projects that could be potentially left out of the budget since the fiscal blueprint still had to go through the Senate, the bicameral conference committee, and the President.