Money woes hound Philippine post-harvest program

The government would have to rework on a four-year program to mechanize the country’s post-harvest facilities by 2011, as it needs P6 billion to complete the plan on time. “But given the financial constraints we are in, we might have to revise the roadmap," Ricardo Cachuela, director of the Philippine Center for Post-harvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech), said Monday. In a briefing yesterday, PhilMech, previously known as the Bureau of Post-harvest Research and Extension, said that only The agency said it got only 50 percent of the budget for drying machines. The four-year, P12-billion roadmap should have already distributed 5,000 dyers to irrigators' groups nationwide, but only 2,000 units have been turned over to government irrigators. “There is also a plan to extend assistance to private irrigators but the lack of funding remains a very big problem," said Arnel Apaga, PhilMech's deputy director. To make up for the funding shortfall, post-harvest officials are looking at borrowing from a Spanish agency and several other European financing institutions, apart from the usual overseas development assistance (ODA) programs within the Asia Pacific region. The Philippines last year signed an agreement with Seoul to build four rice processing centers designed to reduce post-harvest losses and raise the incomes of over 5,000 farmers in four Philippine provinces. The Korea International Cooperation Agency KOICA gave a P649-million grant to partly finance the P785-million rice processing complexes, PhilMech said. The Philippine government had allotted P136 million in counterpart money for the rice processing centers, of which P104 million would come from the Agriculture Department P32 million from the local government units where the processing centers would be located. The processing centers were supposed to be constructed in Sta. Barbara, Pangasinan; Pototan, Iloilo; Pilar, Bohol; and Matanao, Davao. —VS, GMANews.TV