Farmers and fisherfolk under the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA) will be prioritized in the distribution of P500 million fuel subsidy and other assistance, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.
In a statement, DA Sec. William Dar disclosed that as of March 8, a total of 5,463,735 farmers and fishers have already registered with RSBSA.
“Once registered, they are given priority in availing of agriculture and fishery assistance in the form of cash or farm inputs like seeds and fertilizers, and fuel subsidy vouchers, and crop insurance, to name a few,” Dar said on March 10.
DA Assistant Secretary for Regional Operations Arnel de Mesa said the agency has already encouraged all farmers, farmworkers, fisherfolk, including farm youth, to register in their respective city or municipal agriculture offices.
De Mesa explained that the RSBSA has three main components: farmer and fisherfolk profiling, farm parcel georeferencing, and the interventions monitoring system. It contains beneficiaries’ personal and relevant socio-economic information encoded in their respective regional offices.
He added that the successful distribution of the P5,000 Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund-Rice Farmers Financial Assistance (RCEF-RFFA) could be attributed to the RSBSA list of rice farmers.
Meanwhile, Dar said that RSBSA “will be constantly enhanced to ensure data reliability and consistency, and we will continue to innovate and integrate sets of protocols to maintain the system’s efficiency and integrity.”