12 B worth of PRDP fund goes to CAR

Nearly 12 billion of the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP), the largest World Bank-funded project in the country, will go straight to Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) this year.

Based on the first quarter monitoring and evaluation status report on PRDP projects this year, as much as 11.6 billion of PRDP fund will go to Ifugao and Kalinga alone.

In CAR, the province of Ifugao is now the top grosser in terms of total approved sub-projects funded under PRDP, which is a project being implemented by the Department of Agriculture (DA).

The total approved sub-project cost for this province has particularly reached 1829 million, while there are 1774 million worth of approved sub-projects in Kalinga.

Launched in 2013, the DA's PRDP began as a farm-to-market road (FMR) initiative and was eventually expanded to cover several livelihood components meant to improve the lives of agriculture workers in the country.

Last year, the project was injected with additional fund worth 18 billion on top of its existing budget of 127 billion, which had already ran out.

The latest report on PRDP shows that there is now 18 approved infrastructure subprojects worth more than 1802 million in Ifugao alone and four enterprise sub-projects worth more than 127 million.

The infrastructure sub-projects approved for Ifugao are composed of six farm-to-market roads (FMRs), one slope protection, five potable water systems (PWS), and nine communal irrigation systems (CIS).

In terms of enterprises, the province also tops the total subproject cost in the region albeit having only four approved subprojects under this component.

These are livelihood projects on swine raising worth 11 million, cattle fattening and marketing worth 11 million, coffee processing and marketing enterprise worth more than 113 million, and the processing of export quality Ifugao Heirloom Rice worth more than 111 million.

The report further showed that there are no more enterprise sub-project in the pipeline for the province, but there are a number of infrastructure projects pending approval.

Being the top grosser in terms of sub-project costs, the province of Ifugao, especially the municipality of Banaue, has contributed to the present status of CAR, with the highest approved total project cost and second in terms of total number of sub-projects for the whole Luzon A Cluster (CAR, Regions 1, 2, and 3).