Acknowledging that the Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) had worked hard to establish solid progress in the agri-fishery sector for the past three years, implementers are moving swiftly to ensure that good policies and practices are kept while consistently delivering outputs to benefit the stakeholders.

Even before the new Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Manny Piñol assumed office on June 30 last year, the Project through the Local Government Units (LGU) had aggressively pushed for infrastructure subprojects especially farm-to-market roads (FMR) aimed at boosting local agriculture in the rural areas.

However, given the limited budget the PRDP is operating in, there is difficulty in funding all pipelined subprojects deemed technically and economically viable.

“There is a growing need to create mechanisms that shall establish the prioritization scheme in the funding of subprojects based on economic viability and other related socio-economic indicators,” explained Dr. Freddie Corsino in one of the regular Regional Project Coordination Office-Provincial Project Management and Implementing Unit (RPCO-PPMIU) meetings.

In a document released to the RPCOs by the I-BUILD Component, the prioritization scheme shall “create an environment that maximizes limited resources conducive for agricultural growth.”

This scheme shall serve as a viable tool in justifying the selection of subprojects endorsed by the LGU.

For proposals pipelined under additional financing, the following conditions were set:

• it must be in line with the Provincial Commodity Investment Plan (PCIP). This condition is placed to strengthen the institutionalization of PCIP and Value Chain Analysis (VCA) as investment planning tool of the LGUs;
• additionally, LGUs with no approved subprojects but have submitted proposals for funding shall be accommodated and given top priority.
• Proposals satisfying these conditions shall be exempted from succeeding assessments; and
• the LGUs may only avail of the additional funding if the same proposal has a corresponding IREAP subproject within the province. Moreover, proposals with unresolved grievances in relation to the Project’s procurement and finance guidelines will be deferred until the same has been settled.

Proposals that satisfy the above two conditions shall be subjected to succeeding Prioritization of SPs based on LGU Performance and Proposal’s Infrastructure Subproject Type Assessments.

The additional financing of PRDP shall prioritize proposals for communal irrigation system (CIS), small scale irrigation project (SSIP), potable water system (PWS) and other infrastructures over FMRs, the latter to undergo FMR Prioritization Criteria.

“After satisfying all conditions, proposals determined to be high in the priority list will still undergo a review process by the PRDP technical review team,” as stated in the I-BUILD prioritization manual.

The scheme shall forego the “first come, first serve” protocol rather, all proposals for funding are pooled together to be rationally ranked and prioritized based on provided guidelines. (Jaycee M. Capalungan, RPCO2 InfoACE Unit)