Two CSC resolutions for review by Agri Comm

THE City Council Committee on Agriculture and Cultural Communities, chaired by Councilor Jay R. Pascual, is set to tackle two (2) resolutions reclassifying rice, livestock, and poultry farms to harmonize the city’s data to the prescribed uniform standards and classification systems in the generation of official statistics in the Philippine Statistical System (PSS).

In his letter to the City Council, City Mayor Rolando “Klarex” A. Uy said that on the 2023 2nd Quarter Meeting of the Cagayan de Oro Statistics Committee (CSC), the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)-Misamis Oriental has endorsed Resolution No. 1, s. 2023, Approving and Adopting the Revision in the Classification of Livestock and Poultry Farms from Backyard and Commercial to Smallhood, Semi-commercial, and Commercial Farms.

It was learned that during the public hearing and Technical Working Group (TWG) meeting of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform on proposed Senate Bill No. 139 or the “Philippine Livestock Industry Development Act” in January 2022, there was a proposal for the redefinition in response to the continuous changes in the structure of the country’s livestock and poultry industry.

Moreover, on March 21, 2022, a Focused Group Discussion (FGD) with selected stakeholders from the livestock and poultry sectors, academe, and government agencies on the definitions of backyard and commercial livestock and poultry farms was held to establish and recommend an updated and more appropriate definitions of backyard and commercial farms that will be used as bases for planning and policy formulation of the government and other stakeholders, and as targeting mechanism for the identification of beneficiaries for the different government programs and services, among others.

New Rice Classification

Likewise, endorsed was Resolution No. 2, s. 2023, Approving and Adopting the New Rice Classification as Included in the 2020 Philippine Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (PCOICOP).

With the passage of Republic Act No. 11203 or the Rice Tariffication Law, a new rice classification system in monitoring rice prices is needed in order to better measure rice inflation in the country. Also, the Technical Working Group for the Formulation of a New Rice Classification System (TWGFNRCS), in its meeting on February 14, 2022, agreed to establish a small working group on rice classification and conduct a workshop with PSA to come up with a simplified yet workable and practical version of rice classification that will facilitate the generation of timely and reliable price and expenditure statistics, among others, The Gavel further learned.