Agriculture-fisheries law does ‘too much for too little’ - study

MANILA, Philippines - Republic Act No. 8435, also known as the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA), which was designed to alleviate poverty, ensure food security and sustain development through agriculture and fisheries development, "faltered in implementation," study by experts said. "The AFMA is a good law with rather ambitious goals [It] can be faulted for having over-committed; trying to do many things with too many agencies, and too little resources. In the process, it faltered in implementation," said the study, which was published in a book, titled: Modernizing Philippine Agriculture and Fisheries: The AFMA Implementation Experience. Specifically, the study said AFMA suffered from the following flaws: * The budget allocation by components, in percentage terms, was not followed. * There was bias for production-support, to the detriment of marketing, research and development, human resources development and interagency linkages. * There was little concern for regional priorities. * The need for sound criteria for project selection was not explicit. * The role of private investments in growth and job creation was not clear. * Program benefiting monitoring and evaluation was severely inadequate which, in part, hindered the ability of the review team to conduct deeper analyses. The study said the flawed implementation of the AFMA "typifies the long neglect of the agriculture and fisheries sector which results in [unending] rural poverty." The study was a product of two years of research and interviews by agricultural economists and experts Rolando T. Dy, Leonardo A. Gonzales, Manuel F. Bonifacio, Wilfredo P. David, J. Prospero E. De Vera, Flordeliza A. Lantican, Gilberto M. Llanto, Lydia O. Martinez and Eleonora E. Tan. - A. Catipay, BusinessWorld