 | DA sets up 50 community stores across BARMM |
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Manila Bulletin - July 15, 2019, 10:00 PM
The Department of Agriculture (DA) is setting up 50 community stores across the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), which is part of a 10-year effort to “change the lives” of the people in the region whose development was stunted by decades of conflict and bloodshed.
Each of the 50 stores will get a P500,000 funding, but this is nothing compared to the P1 trillion that is needed to develop the war torn region over the next 10 years.
This is based on Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol’s “rough mental computation”, who recently attended the first ever stakeholders forum held specifically to discuss what needs to be done and how much money is needed to improve the living condition in the five provinces in BARMM, namely Tawi Tawi, Sulu, Basilan, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao.
“I believe government needs to invest about one trillion pesos,” Piñol, who will soon become the chair of Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA), said.
Piñol said he knows this figure will raise eyebrows, but he had some questions prepared to counter the perceived cynicism.
“Even our budget planners would probably back off and say: ‘Whoah! Wait a minute! That’s a lot of money to be spent for one region of five provinces. That’s too much’,” Piñol said.
“To those who would look at [this] as an excessive financial requirement for the development of the Bangsamoro Region, I will ask them these questions: how long has the conflict in this region dragged? How many lives had been lost? How much economic opportunities have flown away because of the conflict? Most of all, how much has government spent for bullets, bombs and other war materiel in the effort to end this conflict through force?” he further said.
The massive stakeholders meeting held last week was done to pave the way for the crafting of BARMM’s first ever agriculture and fisheries master plan, which will be presented to President Rodrigo Duterte this week.
In the meantime, the DA committed to set up community stores, which will sell basic household items, across five provinces in the Bangsamoro region.
The establishment of these stores was one of the projects identified as “immediately deliverable” during the aforementioned stakeholders forum.
To be specific, each BARMM province will have 10 stores with P500,000 funding in the form of a No-Interest, No-Collateral loan from the DA’s Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC).
The stores will open in August and will be patterned after the “Kadiwa” Stores previously operated by the National Food Authority (NFA).
Initially, the stores will sell such common household needs as rice, salt, sugar, dried fish, canned goods, milk, spices and even kitchen utensils at prices lower than prevailing market prices.
The will also later become outlets of basic agricultural needs of farmers in the area like seeds, farm inputs and fertilizer.
The community stores, to be known as “Padian na Bangsamoro” will be operated and managed by wives, widows and orphans of former Bangsamoro combatants.
BARMM Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Mohammad Yacob was tasked to initiate the identification and organization of the wives, children and widows of former combatants into groups which will manage and operate the “Padian” outlets in their communities.
Once identified, the ACPC will conduct a training for the widows, children and wives of former combatants on financial literacy, accounting and simple business management in cooperation with its partner company, SM BDO Foundation.
All the 50 initial stores will be linked by a computer network which would monitor daily the sales and activities of the “Padian” outlets.
Once successful, the “Padian” outlets will be expanded to cover all other areas in the Bangsamoro Region, especially the remote island communities.
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