The excise taxes benefited farmers – Cong Mark
COJUANGCO UPDATES
FORMER Fifth District Rep. Mark Cojuangco said the rainy season recently that recently hit Pangasinan with more than two weeks intermittent rains proved beneficial to the farmers because of the presence of the agri-industrial complex that maintains rice and corn drying facility in Alcala town.
Cojuangco said using funds from tobacco excise tax, the 4,500 plus square meters warehouse- drying facility complex owned by the municipal government showed its readiness and availability to help farmers to be worry-free in drying their harvested produce.
“The over P40-million facility can dry about 400 tons of palay or corn daily,” he said.
Farmers have many reasons to be happy about as the congressman, during his administration, bought new mechanical tractors, farm implements, built farm-to-market roads.
“The entire share of Alcala from excise tax is intact, it’s all there and you can check on that,” he told local newsmen.
Different towns (under Cojuangco’s district) have adopted varied ways of spending their excise tax share, he said.
Drying corn and palay produce for better price to help farmers through an agri-industrial facility complex built in Alcala town by former Pangasinan fifth district Rep. Mark Cojuangco.
He said Villasis, for example, bought lot and built a drying facility identical with Alcala’s, has farm-to-market roads, bought seven-hectare lot as future site of cattle and dairy project, tractors, farm implements, feed mixing equipment, fertilizer. “It’s also complete. You can also look at its details,” he said.
The same is true in Laoac, Sison and Sto. Tomas towns, he added. He said the five towns get the big share from tobacco excise tax as they are tobacco producers.
“There is no missing fund. All funds from tobacco excise tax, look for them, they’re there. You count and compute them,” he said.
He said the more than two weeks incessant monsoon rains in July resulted in long queues of trucks in the Alcala drying facility as farmers rushed there to save their produce.
“What they worked hard for in four months would go to waste if their harvested produce gets fungus and is contaminated with aflatoxin which is poisonous to animals,” he said.
He added that if feed millers know their produce have aflatoxin, they will not be accepted because it will contaminate their feeds.
He said at the time of the monsoon rains, more than 1,000 tons for drying have been processed.
“How much is a kilo of corn? At P12 per kilo of corn, at 1,000 tons, one million kilos at P12, that’s P12-million worth of produce of farmers that were saved and there were still long queues,” he said.
Villasis drying facility also came to the aid of corn farmers to facilitate drying of farmers’ produce, Cojuangco added. “Imagine the value saved from wastage, so how could one say these drying facilities are white elephants?,” he said.
He added that the operation is not yet optimized because a farmer, with smaller volume of produce, resorts to selling their harvest at cheaper price to traders at cheap price as these are still wet.
Thus, another important project is to have “agri-lugan” program to enable those without vehicles to be able to bring their harvest to the drying facility, he said. The vehicles will go to the farm site to make farmers worry-free and bring these to the dryer and warehouse.
If this happens, farmers are empowered to demand higher prices for their produce that have been efficiently dried, he added.
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