Eastern Visayas gets big chunk of World Bank-funded project

TACLOBAN CITY, Oct. 24 (PNA) –- Poverty-stricken communities in Eastern Visayas got a big share of allocation for the World Bank-funded Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) in central Philippines.

Albert Barrogo, PRDP deputy project director for Visayas, said that of the 105 enterprise sub-projects in the entire Visayas with a total sum of PHP223.70 million, 47 are from Eastern Visayas.

“Out of this, 44 subprojects were already approved with funding allocation of PHP81 million while three are pipelined,” Barrogo said.

“We are expecting that this would even go up before the year ends. Most of the sub-projects proposed are micro-enterprises, focused on production and trading of certain commodities such as 'ube', vegetables, native chicken, duck, and swine, stingless bee culture,” Barrogo told participants of a cluster coordination meeting in Manapla, Negros Occidental last week.

The three pipelined subprojects involve coco geonets, banana, coconut production and enhanced production thru intercropping of corn and soybeans.

Relatedly, Anita Taran, provincial agriculturist of Samar, thanked he PRDP for prioritizing economically depressed areas.

“We are thankful about the PRDP. This is an opportunity that we want to take advantage of. With our meager resources in the province, we cannot fully support the need of our farmers. Many of them are still trying to get over from the adverse effects of several calamities that hit us in recent years,” she said.

Mayor Imelda Tan of Sogod, Southern Leyte also said, “Although we were generally spared from typhoons, we are trying to exhaust all possible means to help our farmers who were displaced brought by the abaca disease (bunchy top and mosaic) infestation. We have lost so much from it, and as we focus on reviving what was once a flourishing industry in our locality, we count on the support from the PRDP.”

“We want to maximize the benefits that we can get from both the enterprise and infrastructure components of the PRDP. In fact, we take pride that our Suba-Kanangkaan farm–to-market road subproject is already nearing completion. This is the first PRDP-funded subproject implemented in the region. This will surely boost our overall effort to reach out and open up more livelihood opportunities for our rural constituents,” the mayor added.

Highlights of the recently held cluster meeting include presentation of project updates, discussion of issues and concerns impinging each project component, and preparation for the 3rd World Bank implementation support mission.

This was attended by at least 60 participants from three Visayas regions comprised of cluster/regional project and deputy project directors, and component and unit heads. (PNA)
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