Senator Cynthia Villar is seeking a Senate inquiry on the government’s disbursement of the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (RCEF) mandated by the rice tariffication law.
Five months after the signing of the Republic Act No. 11203, Villar on Tuesday invoked her committee’s oversight function on the law, filing Senate Resolution No. 39 to look into the distribution of the P10-billion special fund for rice farmers.
Villar was recently reelected as the chairman of Senate Committee and Agriculture and Food. She sponsored the law in Senate during the 17th Congress.
Under the RA 11203, P10 billion of the tariff collections on rice imports shall be appropriated annually for rice farmers through various programs that would help increase their production.
Half of the fund shall be allocated to the Philippine Center for Post Harvest Development and Modernization (PhilMech) to provide farmers with rice farm machineries and equipment; 30 percent to the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) to be used for the development, propagation, and promotion of inbred rice seeds to rice farmers, and the organization of rice farmers into seed growers associations engaged in seed production and trade (30 percent); 10 percent for the credit facility that will be managed by the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP); 10 percent for farmers’ training on rice crop production, modern rice farming techniques, seed production, farm mechanization, and knowledge or technology transfer.
In her resolution, Villar cited reports that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) released in December 2018 P5 billion for the RCEF.
But only P1 billion of the released amount has allegedly been disbursed, Villar said. It was credited to the farmers’ accounts, under the memorandum of understanding entered by the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) with the LBP and DBP.
The remaining P4 billion, meanwhile, is still being threshed out by the National Economic Development Authority and the Department of Agriculture (DA). (Vanne Terrazola)
