The Department of Agriculture (DA) said it has set aside funds to indemnify insured farmers and extend production loans to those who will be affected by El Niño.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said the DA is ready to “immediately” release crop insurance payments to farmers who will incur losses due to the dry spell.
Piñol added that the DA would also provide grant loans to farmers under its Survival and Recovery (SURE) loan program.
“Crop insurance will cover up to 100 percent of the damage while the Sure loans will grant up to P25,000 in a no-interest, no-collateral loan payable in three years,” Piñol said in a post on his official Facebook page over the weekend.
The agriculture chief said the “assistance and interventions” provided to farmers would be based on reports from the DA regional field offices and the El Niño task force.
The DA would also be “guided by the maps” provided by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), Piñol added.
The state weather bureau projected last week that a weak El Niño will affect the country. Pagasa said it could develop into a full-blown El Niño.
By end-March, Pagasa projected that nine provinces—five in Luzon and four in Mindanao—would suffer drought.
Earlier, Piñol said the El Niño would not affect palay output in the first quarter as the dry spell would be felt at the tail end of the harvest season.
“We are thankful to God that El Niño would hit us just as the harvest season is almost over,” he said in a news briefing last week.
In a report, the Philippine Statistics Authority said palay production in the January-to-March period may rise by 0.49 percent to 4.64 million metric tons, from the previous year’s level of 4.62 MMT.