Mainstreaming of Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) innovations equate to a broader support of local governments, national agencies and the private sectors.

Now on its fifth year implementation, the Project already mainstreamed nine (9) of its enhance operational procedures, standards and tools across Department of Agriculture agencies.

For Mariline B. Locson, provincial planning and development coordinator of Zamboanga del Sur, PRDP’s project implementation in their province did not only support the economic development of their area but also provide them with tools and enhance their technical skills.

“There are lots of emerging benefits from PRDP. We are now using the E-VSA as one of the planning tools and it’s very effective. By just putting the required data, it would automatically rank the municipalities, showing us the potential LGUs to invest on for a particular commodity,” she said.

Vulnerability and Suitability Assessment (E-VSA) is adopted by local planners in prioritizing production areas based on the land or area condition and socio-economic factors. E-VSA fast tracks the process of choosing the most suitable location for a project especially on the enterprise development aspect.

Meanwhile, the Value Chain Analysis transforms the way LGUs and other agencies prioritize their investment by identifying what are the gaps in the industry. This fast tracks the identification of right interventions and be able to produce a market based solution. To date, Mindanao has produced 26 commodities with approved VCAs and there are still 7 newly formulated VCAs under review.

This translated to the formulation of the Priority Commodity Investment Plans (PCIPs) which is now being used as planning instrument between DA and Local Government Unit.  Currently, all 27 provinces and 6 cities in Mindanao have approved CIPs.

In monitoring subprojects like farm-to-market roads, both regional and local monitoring teams are trained and now using the geo-tagging tools. This helps in ensuring the quality of project implementation and faster monitoring from LGUs to national level.

“Before, we don’t use geotagging in our project. But PRDP introduced this innovation to us and we are now using it to document our projects like farm-to-market road. We always use the geotagging on all activities of the contractor in the field. This prevented issued on corruption and substandard project implementation,” said Alwin T. Pono, provincial engineer of Surigao del Norte.

Other mainstreamed operational procedures and tools adopted by the provinces include harmonized procedures for infrastructure investment; web-based document tracking system; DA-wide harmonized planning, programming and budgeting guidelines based on PCIPs; On-line regional submissions of SOEs, receipts and disbursement requests; and teleconferencing to facilitate communication between national and region offices and saving on travel cost.

All these reforms help in enhancing the effectiveness and coverage of the DA’s program in supporting a more competitive agriculture sector by establishing a strong partnership with LGUs, and the private sectors. (Joy M. Montecalvo/PSO)