While most industries showed negative performance in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, agriculture is one rare ray of hope.
Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) deputy executive director Assistant Secretary Romeo Montenegro said while the industry and services sectors in Mindanao posted negative 6.9 percent and negative 9.7 percent performance, respectively, the agriculture sector continues to stay afloat and even grew at 0.1 percent.
“Agriculture grew point one percent, very small perhaps and minimal perhaps, yet, we can considered that agriculture is a tiny spark in the light of this otherwise dark reality that we face because of the pandemic,” he said in a webinar on Wednesday.
Because of this, Montenegro said MinDA is emboldened to do more what is logical and most viable in Mindanao and that is to harness the strength of agriculture in Mindanao.
“Our inherent strength and the only sector that delivered us resilience in this pandemic period. This is of course on the way forward to be complemented by infrastructure development,” he said.
For Mindanao to move forward, Montenegro said it has to go back to where it has been strong and that is agriculture and to continue to leverage the strength in the agriculture particularly in terms of bringing up products, up the value chain, creating the value adding so that farmers are not just producing raw but producing value added and final products so that it can impose higher prices in the market, and looking not just domestic but export market.
He also mentioned that basic cargo movements are also back and proof of this are the cargo loads or ten footer container trucks, refrigerated vans, and many others on the road- these are indicators that the flow of goods is getting back to normal.
“With those reality, there are farmers in the rural areas generating revenues because the demand is back,” he said.
Compared to four months ago, Mindanao is in a better shape with almost everything. He cited that 75 percent of industrial and commercial establishments are now back in operation, the power demand is back to pre-Covid levels from as low more than 1,300 megawatts in May of this year is now back to 1,700 MW demand everyday, which is the pre-Covid demand in Mindanao.
“Although, we are noting a slight reduction of this considering that most of the energy hungry establishments such as malls, hotels, and industries are operating at reduced capacity,” he said.
The resumption of the construction activities in both public and private establishments, is an indications that indeed Mindanao is transitioning back, although, under new normal.
In terms of economic outlook in Mindanao, MinDA was supposed to peg Mindanao’s growth for this year at around seven percent.
“Unfortunately, today we woke up to a new reality one that post great challenge to our economy in the same manner continues threat to the health and safety of our country,” Montenegro said.
