The country’s agriculture performance for the first semester of 2023 is expected to be “good,” a Monetary Board (MB) member said over the weekend.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to see it by quarter because it’s not the planting season, so it’s more appropriate to see it by semester and I think the first semester will be okay of this year I expected,” MB member Bruce Tolentino said during the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines and San Miguel Corp. (EJAP-SMC) Annual Business Journalism Seminar.
The main drivers, he said, are the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL).
“The RCEP is still doing okay which means it’s putting money and productivity enhancement into the hands of farmers, and as we observe it there have been improvements every semester ever since the RTL was passed,” Tolentino added.
He also said that the first semester usually gets higher productivity than the second semester.
“Usually we get the higher impact, higher productivity in the first semester rather than in the second, because in the second usually the typhoons come,” the MB member said.
“And it really also depends on where the El Niño will happen, if it does not hit the rice area then its good, but if hits the rice area it will be a problem,” Tolentino added.
In 2022, agricultural production shrank by 0.1 percent, marking the third straight year of contraction, as crops and fisheries output declined, data from Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
Data also showed that the full-year value of production in agriculture and fisheries declined at a slower pace than the 1.7 percent contraction in 2021.
It also missed the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) 1.2 percent to 1.5 percent full-year growth target.
Meanwhile, agriculture performed better in 2022 than in 2021, although improvement is at a very low rate because of the opening of the economy by the second half of the year and hence, mobility of people and goods and services in agriculture is now less constrained, the DA said.