The Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) has different finance protocols and processes compared to regular government programs.

For instance, the Project utilizes an 80-10-10 counter-parting scheme in funding infrastructure subprojects and 60-20-20 in funding enterprise subprojects. The fund is sourced from the loan proceeds (from World Bank), from the government (through the Department of Agriculture), and from the local government units.

Accountants and budget officers of proponent LGUs are usually not involved in subproject preparation. Some of them only heard about the Project upon the issuance of the NOL.

With this, accountants and budget officers of Ilocos provinces and municipalities which have No Objection Letter-issued or ongoing implementation of subprojects under the PRDP participated in a Financial Management Training held at Pangasinan Research and Development Center, Sual, Pangasinan on March 22-24, 2017 for them to be oriented on the PRDP and its difference to regular government projects.

Some of the topics discussed during the training are: the schedule of release of funds, the requirement s for the release of funds, financial reports, financial monitoring, audit arrangements, and common errors.

The speed of disbursement is a factor considered in the evaluation of the PRDP’s implementation by the World Bank. Through the training and well-informed LGU finance units, fund disbursements are expected to expedite and meet targets. (Dessa U. Estrada and Vida V. Cacal, DA-PRDP RPCO1 InfoACE)