WITH her town mainly anchored on tobacco and poultry farming, Mayor April Rose Dablio will focus on agriculture in her first full year as chief executive of the municipality.
The P87 million budget for 2026 is finally the one proposed by the mayor after she took office in July 2025.
In an interview January 12, Dablio said that the amount represented the excise tax that Gitagum inherits from the national government which is largely due to its tobacco farming income.
Agricultural lands cover a major portion of the total land area with 2,634 hectares or 87 percent of the municipality’s total land area.
The dominant crop grown is coconut but Dablio reported that tobacco is more popular since its market reaches as far as Zamboanga and Negros.
“We cultivate native barley tobacco. We don’t compete with multinational companies because their products are Virginia tobacco. But with our native barley tobacco, we can already sustain our economy,” Dablio said.
In fact, the mayor added that the National Tobacco Association has assessed tobacco grown in Gitagum as among the highest quality in the country.
Gitagum has a total of 600 hectares grown to tobacco by 1,981 farming families.
Another agricultural sector that Dablio is focusing on is poultry.
The mayor said that the municipal government has set aside P100,000 this year to purchase fly sprays to curb the infestation of flies in the neighborhood.
The persistence of flies in Gitagum and other nearby towns due to poultry farming has been a constant headache to the community in recent years.
Along this line, Dablio has met with poultry farm owners and growers in her municipality to address the problem during his first month in office.
Gitagum will celebrate its fiesta this Sunday.
