A group of agricultural stakeholders has resurrected the call for the creation of a separate Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR), saying that Filipinos’ high protein requirement is already enough reason to justify it.
Asis Perez, convenor of Tugon Kabuhayan, said the need to sustain and improve the supply of Filipino’s protein requirements is enough to justify the immediate need to create a separate agency for fisheries and aquatic resources.
“We want to emphasize the fact that it is important to create a separate department for fisheries just from the viewpoint of our protein requirement," Perez said in a briefing on Monday.
"PSA said our total animal protein requirement is 57 kilograms per capita per year. Of that, 37 kilograms come from fish. The requirement for other meat is just 20 kilograms,” he added.
Right now, there are 19 bills that are being pushed for in the House of Representatives in relation to Tugon Kabuhayan’s proposal, while there are three proposed bills in the Senate.
The aim is to make the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), an attached agency to the Department of Agriculture (DA), a separate government agency, with a focus on the enforcement of fisheries laws and the development of fisheries production.
For Tugon Kabuhayan, a bureau is not enough to oversee the fisheries and aquatic resources in the Philippines, the third-largest archipelago in the world.
“We have the fifth largest coastline in the world. We also wide water resources, a total of 233 million hectares, which is 7.7 times bigger than the country’s land resource,” Perez, who served as the BFAR Director during the previous administration, said.
“As of today, we have 1.97 million registered fishermen in the municipal registry, including commercial fishermen and aquaculture farmers. We have 365,000 registered vessels and 7,344 commercial fishing vessels,” he added.
Perez also said the creation of DFAR will not cost a lot on the part of the Philippine government because BFAR already has an existing structure and personnel.
“We will be able to determine actual budgetary requirements in the next meetings but right now, the cost will not exceed more than P2 billion to establish the department,” Perez said.
“What will happen now is that DFAR will be able to create separate bureaus that will focus on capture and aquaculture, protection and enforcement, post-harvest and marketing, and international affairs. It will function like DA on the operational level. It will have regional directors,” he added.
In 2016, former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said he is against the creation of a separate fisheries department as this would go against President Rodrigo Duterte's call for "effective government" and will require additional expenditure to the administration.
Piñol said the creation of a new department runs counter to the advocacy of Duterte for a leaner, less bureaucratic, and more effective government and it would entail additional expenditures for government.
He was specifically reacting to the call for both the Congress and Senate to look into the proposal to create DFAR.
It was particularly Senator Francis Pangilinan, who used to chair the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food, who proposed the creation of DFAR, saying that while the DA is able to fulfill its mandate for aquamarine and fisherfolk, it is only "in a limited sense".