Port projects for landing farm goods under study

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) said it is looking to tap private-sector partners to develop port facilities specialized in handling agricultural shipments.

Agriculture Secretary Francisco P. Tiu Laurel, Jr. said the DA’s aim is to bring about the more efficient movement of farm goods, which may require such shipments to bypass the Philippines’ congested major ports.

“We will come up with a proposal… on available sites,” Mr. Laurel told reporters, adding that he hopes to attract bidders or unsolicited proposals.

He added that the DA is planning to identify 17 candidate sites, estimating the potential cost at about P40.5 billion.

He said 10 main sites are estimated to cost P3 billion each, with the remaining seven expected to cost about P1.5 billion each.

“For the areas where no one is interested, then we will need to raise funding for that,” Mr. Laurel added.

He said that if the private sectors interested in assuming the risk of building port facilities for the government, “then let’s use other people’s money.”

The candidate sites include locations in Mindoro, Negros, Iloilo, southern Albay, and Batangas, he said.

The rerouting of goods to such ports, he said, have the potential to bring down fertilizer costs by 5%, corn by 5%, and feed for hogs by 10-15%.

Mr. Laurel has said that delays at the ports could foil government plans to bring down inflation via lower rice import tariffs.

“If we have the right number of agri-ports all over the country, the cost will go down, the price of rice, fertilizer, seed will go down. We really need the ports,” he said in a briefing earlier this week. — Adrian H. Halili