THE government is still looking to set up “permanent” Kadiwa stores in every city and municipality in the country and wants these to be managed by farmers cooperatives, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said Tuesday.
Speaking at a post-State of the Nation Address briefing on Tuesday, Laurel said that they were planning to turn Kadiwa into “brick-and-mortar” stores with 1,500 to be built over the next three years.
“What we will do is to level up from mere pop-up stores; we will establish permanent brick and mortar stores all over the Philippines,” the agriculture chief said.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. Photo from Department of Agriculture FB page
Operations of the Kadiwa stores will later be turned over to farmers’ and fisherfolks’ cooperatives to ensure that wholesalers and retailers will be “honest.”
“Our plan is to eventually make it cooperative-run. So, our farmers and fishers will directly go to our consumers so they can increase their income while lowering the price of basic goods.”
Kadiwa is a Department of Agriculture (DA) program that aims to provide the public with affordable goods by enabling farmers to sell goods directly to consumers.
First introduced in the 1980s by then-President Ferdinand Marcos, it was relaunched in 2022 by his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., after he became president and also assumed the agriculture portfolio.
Marcos said last year that he wanted to make the program permanent. As of early 2023, the number of Kadiwa stores across the country was said to be around 500.
Tiu-Laurel said they also remained confident that agriculture growth would improve this year despite the effects of the El Niño and La Niña weather patterns, which respectively bring dry spells and floods.
Farm output slowed to 0.05 percent in the first quarter, slowing from 0.9 percent three months earlier and 2.1 percent in the comparable 2023 period.
Tiu-Laurel said 1.0- to 2.0-percent growth could be achieved this year given good weather and strengthened government interventions including an effort to irrigate more crop areas.
He cited efforts to irrigate more crop areas, with 45,000 hectares of new land set to be irrigated in addition to the 38,000 hectares of irrigated areas to be redeveloped.
The DA, which has expressed confidence in boosting palay (unmilled rice) output to 20.4 million metric tons (MT) this year, also does not expect imports of the grain to hit 4.7 million MT as projected by the US Department of Agriculture.
The forecast was based on the government’s having slashed the tariff on rice imports to 15 percent from 35 to 15 percent.
“I don’t think the lowering of tariffs will really increase importation,” Tiu-Laurel said.
Rice imports surged to 2.3 million MT in the first half, a 24-percent increase compared to the year-earlier 1.8 million MT.
Inbound shipments of the staple totaled 3.6 million MT in 2023, down 5.9 percent from 2022’s record high of 3.82 million MT.
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