Jeremias Andrade Carrera
12 Dec 2007

 

 

Mr. John Bolinas:

Your posting on the exportable products from Pangasinan aside from mangoes and bangus should have been a priority project to help the majority of our kabaleyans-home or cottage industries long time ago.

Since the Philippines has the highest power cost in Asia and about the same as Guam (18-22 cents per kilowatt-hour), the priority projects must be the development of inexpensive design and construction of solar devices such as solar food dryers, refrigeration, heaters, lights, etc. in order for the Philippines to be competitive.

Funding for the DOST, Dept of Agriculture (extension agents to train our farmers), and farmers cooperative should also be priority.

Unfortunately, the top priority is to export more people – the OFWs and no program to end it because of the false positive sense it causes about the economy.

It is very saddening to see our farmers not being helped by its government. Even the appropriation for fertilizers is squandered, so that means our farmers are considered not important to this administration. Yet they always ask the overseas kabaleyans to invest their money back home.

Government support is always necessary for any program to prosper, but most officials do not support programs that do not generate SOP for themselves.

So anyone going into the export of Pangasinan products will do it on their on which will not benefit a whole lot of our kabaleyans.