Government interventions in the highly vulnerable farm sector may be “too little or too late", which may be the reason for the sector's 1.4 percent decline in 2020.
This is according to Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) National Manager Raul Montemayor, who said the Department of Agriculture (DA) may have not effectively addressed the real problems of the sector and thus, its significant decline.
“It looks like the DA spoke too early about the resiliency and superior performance of the agriculture sector vis-a-vis other sectors in the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Montemayor said.
This was after Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released its latest data on the agriculture sector’s performance, which showed a 1.2 percent decline in output for the entire 2020 and a 3.8 percent decline in output in the fourth quarter alone.
The decline came after agriculture became the only subsector in the Philippine economy that registered growth throughout the pandemic, registering a 0.7 percent growth in the third quarter while all the other subsectors are down.
“To some extent, this was due to natural calamities and challenges brought about by the COVID pandemic,” Montemayor said.
But he also said that “in general the 2020 performance of agriculture is not as good as it was previously publicized by the DA”.
He also said that data on the value of production could be deceptive because the increase in value may be due to higher prices and not necessarily improved output, even when using constant prices.
At current prices, the value of agricultural production stood at P503.8 billion, which was 5.0 percent higher than the previous year’s level.
On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary William Dar downplayed the full-year contraction in the agriculture sector’s growth performance.
He said that things could have been worse following the series of typhoons from November to December, the persistence of COVID-19 pandemic and African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreaks, Taal Volcano eruption in January, among others. Collectively, he described these events as "a perfect storm".
For this year, Dar targets a 2.5 percent growth in farm output.