The Department of Agriculture (DA) is planning the conversion of the Benguet Agri-Pinoy Trading Center (BAPTC) in La Trinidad, Benguet into a corporation and stop the bureaucratic inertia that has kept its constituents frustrated and unfulfilled.
Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban has issued a special order upgrading its status from that of a cooperative into a corporation.
The BAPTC is considered the country’s biggest vegetable trading facility when it first started trading operations in July 2015 with a P700 million budget.
Its transformation is seen optimizing the facility’s potentials and profitability through the provision of more cost-efficient services and modern facilities for farmers, traders and other stakeholders.
The agency also said the transformation into a corporation will drive modernization and industrialization of agriculture in the Cordillera region.
Former DA Secretary William Dar acknowledged the current operation of BAPTC is constrained by a bureaucratic system that hinders its growth, sustainability and profitability.
“With a corporate set-up, stakeholders will be able to optimize the benefits, improve the marketability of Cordillera vegetables and provide our farmers, buyers and traders reasonable profit for their produce. Further, it could create subsidiaries to engage in other revenue-generating enterprises,” Dar said before.
