Manila: The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) is preparing to adopt a significantly larger estimate of the country's potentially irrigable land, a change that could reset its development targets and require bigger funding beginning in 2028. During the Senate hearing on NIA's proposed 2027 budget on Thursday, Administrator Eduardo Guillen said an updated regional assessment placed the country's net potential irrigable area at about 4.65 million hectares, compared with the long-used benchmark of 3.13 million hectares.
According to Philippines News Agency, the older figure covers mainly rice and corn lands with slopes of up to 3 percent. NIA's updated mapping widened the scope to areas with slopes of up to 8 percent that can still be served through appropriate irrigation technologies. As of Dec. 31, 2025, about 2.2 million hectares had been developed for irrigation. NIA currently reports this as 70.25 percent of the old 3.13-million-hectare potential, leaving about 1 million hectares still to be developed under that benchmark.
Senate Committee on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform chair Francis Pangilinan said keeping the old denominator could give an incomplete picture of the country's remaining irrigation requirements. 'Moving forward, shouldn't you already transition to the new figure?' Pangilinan asked, noting that NIA's accomplishment rate, project pipeline, and financial requirements would have to be recalibrated once a larger benchmark is adopted.
'Lahat ng pigura mo, lahat ng computations mo, lahat ng budget projections mo (All your figures, all your computations, all your budget projections), will obviously adjust to a new benchmark,' he said. Guillen said the updated estimate still needs the concurrence of the Department of Agriculture secretary and approval of the NIA Board before it formally replaces the existing benchmark.
Asked by Pangilinan whether this could translate into different appropriations for 2028 based on a larger area requiring development, Guillen replied in the affirmative. NIA formally began an assessment of its National Irrigation Master Plan 2020-2030 in June, creating a steering committee and technical working group to review the blueprint for irrigation development.
The old 3.13-million-hectare benchmark has been used by NIA for years in measuring national irrigation development. Its 2019 report, for instance, placed the potential irrigable area at 3.128 million hectares. The broader estimate comes as NIA seeks substantially more resources for irrigation expansion and rehabilitation. The agency proposed a PHP233.85 billion budget for 2027, but only PHP47.43 billion was included in the National Expenditure Program, 26 percent below its PHP64.37 billion allocation this year.
Guillen said NIA's updated mapping would allow future irrigation investments to be directed toward areas that had previously been left outside the traditional definition of irrigable land, including sites that could be served by pump and pipe-based systems. The recalibration could also give government a clearer measure of how much agricultural land remains without irrigation - and how much more it would cost to close that gap.
