052507: New rural development program signed for Mindanao

By Manuel T. Cayon

Reporter

DAVAO CITY—The World Bank and the country’s Department of Agriculture hoped to reduce poverty incidence by about 15 percent at the end of a two-phase rural development program that began in 1998. Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the Mindanao Rural Development Program has targeted 15 percent of rural poor of this Southern Philippine island to improve their economic survival at the end of its program in 2012. A second phase of the MRDP was launched here Wednesday with a fresh fund of $123 million for a five-year spread. Many provinces in Mindanao, especially in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the Zamboanga Peninsula, Central Mindanao and the Caraga Region belong to the country’s poorest provinces. Mindanao has a current population estimated to be at 22 million. Carolina V. Figueroa Geron, the WB senior operations officer and country sector coordinator for rural development, natural resources and environment sector, said the MRDP-2 would pick up from where the MRDP left, with targets being surpassed by the recipients in five provinces, which covered 53 municipalities. Although a World Bank officer, mission representative Rajul Raturi, earlier threatened to pull out the Bank’s funding back then in 2002 for a dismal implementation of the project, described as “far from ideal” in Compostela Valley, Geron said that evaluation of the first MRDP indicated that communities continued to pursue their projects “surpassing the targets of the communities [in poverty alleviation].” The first MRDP covered Compostela Valley, Agusan del Sur, North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat. Geron said that Maguindanao, among the poorest and with many of its communities suffering the brunt of the armed conflict, “was one of the top performers and has never been a laggard.” The second phase would cover 27 provinces and 225 municipalities. The original program was began in 1998 with a life span of 12 years supposed to end in 2010. The current MRDP-2 was started this year, however, and would end in the next five years, or in 2012. Geron said that the exemplary performance of the poor areas would be replicated in the expanded scope of the MRDP-2, “with adequate anti-corruption and transparent governance mechanism to ensure that the money actually goes to the communities and their beneficiaries.” The World Bank has lent $84 million, with the rest of the $23 million shouldered by the Philippine government. The government counterpart would be taken care of by the local governments “on a 50-50 percent sharing arrangement with the national government.” The innovation of the MRDP-2 is the participation of the local government officials, where in the first phase MRDP money was given directly to the partner private sector and business groups. The local governments were factored into the second phase due to the volume of infrastructure that was allotted into the program. Geron said that 70 percent of the $123 million five-year fund would be used to construct farm-to-market roads, but which would also include irrigation facilities and transport terminal ports. This year alone, P128 million would be spent to construct an aggregate length of 71 kilometers of farm roads. This length of road, though, is only four percent of the targeted 2,150 kilometers of dilapidated roads.

 

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/0525&262007/economy05.html