The Senate will support the push for the restoration of the P2 billion Sugar Industry Development Program fund for 2024, but the Negros bloc in the House of Representatives should first seek its inclusion in next year’s budget, Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said Saturday, August 12.
Republic Act No. 10659 or the Sugarcane Industry Development Act (SIDA) of 2015 states that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) should allocate P2 billion a year to promote the competitiveness of the sugarcane industry and improve the incomes of farmers and farm workers through improved productivity, product diversification, job generation, and increased efficiency of sugar mills.
Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) acting administrator Pablo Azcona, who is pushing for the restoration of the P2 billion, said the DBM has proposed an allocation of only P1 billion in the 2024 national budget that is up for deliberation in Congress.
The Negros bloc can work for the increase in the sugar fund in the Lower House and he will support it when it reaches the Senate, Zubiri said at a press conference in Bacolod City on Saturday.
“Right now the ball is in the House of Representatives. The budget is considered a local law so we will wait for it to reach the Senate by October,” he said.
Zubri said he will talk to Senator Cynthia Villar because she chairs the sub-committee on agriculture in the budget deliberations.
Zubiri said Villar is one of the authors of the SIDA so he is confident she will support the push for P2 billion.
He said the budget for the sugar industry had been reduced in the past because of the poor absorptive capacity of the Department of Agriculture in implementing the projects for the sugar industry.
Bacolod Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez had authored the SIDA in the Lower House when he was congressman of the 3rd District of Negros Occidental.*