The Philippines has more irrigable land than previously thought, with the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) revising its estimate upward to 4.2 million hectares after factoring in upland communities previously excluded from national irrigation planning, its administrator said Saturday.
NIA Administrator Eduardo Guillen made the disclosure in an interview on DZRH News program Special on Saturday on June 13, saying the original National Irrigation Master Plan pegged the country’s irrigable land at 3.2 million hectares based on a 3% slope standard—a figure he questioned upon assuming his post.
“Sabi ko 3% slope, teka muna, papano yung mga nasa upland communities?” Guillen said, explaining that the narrow slope criterion excluded large portions of the country’s agricultural uplands from irrigation coverage.
He said NIA subsequently commissioned Regional Irrigation Master Plans using a broader 8% slope standard, which identified approximately 1 million additional hectares of irrigable land across the country, bringing the revised national total to 4.2 million hectares.
Guillen said the original master plan also failed to account for the difficulty and cost of building dams along major river systems—such as the Cagayan River—where the scale of infrastructure required makes projects financially infeasible under standard government evaluation criteria.
He said NIA’s irrigation coverage has stalled at around 60% of its target, meaning a substantial portion of even the conservatively estimated irrigable land has yet to be serviced.
Former Senator Orly Mercado, who joined the interview as a studio guest, said the absence of a National Land Use Plan has long undermined the country’s ability to translate irrigation potential into actual agricultural productivity, leaving planning fragmented across local government units with competing priorities.
Guillen agreed, saying NIA’s guidance currently comes only from the National Irrigation Master Plan, and that a comprehensive national land use framework would provide the integrated foundation needed to fully realize the country’s expanded irrigation potential.
