An additional loan financing amounting to US $450 Million is being requested by the Department of Agriculture (DA) for the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP), mainly to cater to the additional demand for rural infrastructure.

According to DA Regional Executive Director Lucrecio R. Alviar, Jr., there has been a faster demand for infrastructure, majority of which are farm-to-market roads (FMRs).

“This has resulted in the oversubscription of funds amounting to Php 21.197 Billion which is almost twice the project’s allocation for rural infrastructures,” Dir. Alviar reported in March during a special meeting of the Economic Development Committee (EDC), one of the sectoral committees of the Regional Development Council (RDC) 2.

After being endorsed by the EDC to the RDC 2, the proposal was subsequently supported by the Council through a resolution passed during the RDC’s joint meeting with the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) 2 on June 23, 2016.

In her report during the joint meeting, EDC Vice Chairperson Atty. Ma. Esperanza C. Bañares, the Regional Director of the Department of Trade and Industry, said that the additional loan will defray the costs for infrastructure projects and for other prospective proposals along the same.

“This will address the oversubscription of rural infrastructure investments and operational expenses as indicated by the Php 21.197 Billion worth of sub-projects in excess of the total allocation,” stated Dir. Bañares.

Of the four components of the PRDP, infrastructure development or I-BUILD received the biggest allocation of 67.32% from the USD $500 Million loan granted by the World Bank in 2014. This was followed by enterprise development (I-REAP), project support (I-SUPPORT), and local and national planning (I-PLAN).

“After one year of implementation in all the 81 provinces in the country, a total of 539 sub-projects have been generated for the I-BUILD component, 429 of which are FMRs,” reported Dir. Bañares.

Other subprojects include bridges, communal irrigation systems, and other infrastructure facilities that support the value chain enterprise.

“Thirty four of these sub-projects are in Region 2, 13 of which have already been approved and the remaining 21 are in the pipeline which covers about 190 kilometers of FMRs,” the Director added. “

“The additional loan will ensure continued commitment and uninterrupted project implementation through engagement with the municipal LGUs who have already been considered as eligible partners and direct implementers under the project’s revised institutional arrangements for LGUs,”

The PRDP aims to increase the household incomes of farmer-beneficiaries to at least 5% annually as well as the income of beneficiaries involved in enterprise development to 30%. It also targets a 7% increase in the value of annual marketed outputs and a 20% increase in the number of farmers and fishers who have approved access to DA services.

The PRDP is a six-year project which is expected to end on December 2020. #