DAVAO CITY, Philippines – The Philippine Rural Development Program (PRDP) under the Department of Agriculture (DA) received a satisfactory performance rating from the World Bank for its well-implemented projects.
During the 6th World Bank Review Mission last June in Zamboanga del Norte, the World Bank assessed that both the development and global environment objectives of the project continued to be satisfactory.
The PRDP introduced the Provincial Commodity Investment Plan (PCIP) that has been institutionalized across the country as an effective and technically based planning tool for Local Governments (LGUs) and Regional Development Councils (RDC).
The PCIP is a strategic plan utilized by a total of 81 provinces in the Philippines, of which 27 were provinces in Mindanao. It aims to improve the agri-fishery prioritization at the provincial level.
Moreover, it seeks to increase rural incomes and enhance farm and fishery productivity in targeted areas by supporting smallholders and fishers to increase their marketable surpluses and their access to markets.
With regard to rural infrastructure achievements of PRDP, it has a total of 390 rural infrastructure sub-projects that have been approved, of which 99 have been completed.
These include 71 Farm-to-Market Roads (FMRs) with a median length of 3 km and overall length of 269 km, two bridges, three potable water systems, and other 25 infrastructures.
Based on their data, benefits assessed for completed FMRs show a 15.2% increase in household real income. Other benefits include 54% reduction in travel time on average that would help bolster in making efficient delivers of fresh agriculture products from farms to markets.
For rural enterprise achievements, PRDP has a total of 573 approved enterprise sub-projects which benefit around 120,000 household members of 878 proponent groups. While a total of 183 enterprise sub-projects are under implementation benefiting some 32,435 households.
The projects under PRDP are jointly funded by the World Bank, DA, and LGUs.
Dani Alesna, Deputy Project Director of PRDP-Mindanao, said in a press conference that more or less 40% of the additional $170 million fund given by the World Bank went to Mindanao.
“Mindanao gets much share in the budget because it holds wider scope of project implementation compared to other clusters. And since Mindanao has six regions under it,” Alesna said.
He said they are grateful that the World Bank noted their contributions and development in building a better Mindanao.
The PRDP is a 6-year national government platform for an inclusive, value-chain oriented, and climate resilient agriculture and fisheries sector. (davaotoday.com)
