The Regional Project Coordination Office-CAR (RPCO-CAR) of the Department of Agriculture’s Philippine Rural Development Project (DA-PRDP) concluded CY 2019 with a Year-end assessment. The activity was undertaken to present and review the Project’s performance in terms of physical and financial accomplishments. The activity also served as a venue for conduct of the CY 2020 planning workshop.

Held on January 23 in Aringay, La Union, Provincial and Municipal Project Management and Implementing Units (P/MPMIUs) from the Cordillera provinces and implementing municipalities – La Trinidad and Kabayan in Benguet, Banaue in Ifugao, Bontoc and Bauko in Mountain Province, and Villaviciosa in Abra joined in the conduct of the review and planning activities.

DA-RFO-CAR OIC-Regional Executive Director and RPCO-CAR Project Director Cameron P. Odsey welcomed the participants. He said that CAR has continuously kept its rank as the top region in the North Luzon Cluster with the highest cost and number of approved subprojects. However, in terms of implementation, the region has not performed well, particularly in the timely completion of projects.

“I believe that the solution to the challenges we face are still with you and I know that we can overcome them together and not lose the opportunity of being able to complete all the projects such as those that you have proposed under the PRDP,” he added.

Jason Budas, Head of the RPCO-CAR Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) unit presented a brief overview of the accomplishments of the region for 2019.

From the 51 approved infrastructure (I-BUILD) and 53 enterprises (I-REAP) in CAR, the region has 23 completed and 24 ongoing infrastructure subprojects to date as compared to last year’s eight (8) completed and 34 ongoing subprojects. As for the enterprise subprojects, there are 21 completed and 21 ongoing as compared to last year’s 17 completed and 21 ongoing subprojects.

The province of Ifugao has the highest cost share of approved infrastructure and enterprise subproject with 29.85 percent followed by Kalinga with 28.80 percent and Benguet with 16.96 percent.

As to the status of investment uptake based on the Provincial Commodity Investment Plans (PCIPs), Budas reported that 31 percent of the interventions included in the PCIP amounting to a total of P9.41 billion were already financed by other agencies as of October 31, 2019. These are interventions on input supply, production, postharvest, processing, and marketing.

After the presentation of the overview of accomplishments, each implementing unit presented the status of their subprojects (physical and financial) along with the issues/ concerns they encountered followed by a breakout session to come up with an action plan to improve accomplishments and resolve issues.

In a nut shell, the bottleneck of slow subproject implementation arises from the low and slow disbursement and procurement progress, lack of manpower and equipment of contractors, and subproject suspensions/ extensions because of requests for variation orders.

The province of Kalinga on the other hand, was commended for having completed one enterprise and four infrastructure subprojects in a span of five years. Kalinga PPMIU head Engr. Domingo A. Bakilan said that these are mainly attributed to the good partnership and close coordination among the contractors, PPMIU, RPCO, PSO, and NPCO.

Meanwhile, as incentives for provinces with the highest disbursement, the RPCO presented recognition awards to the following Local Government Units (LGUs): Mountain Province for having the highest disbursement rate versus target disbursement for both I-REAP and I-BUILD; Kalinga for having the highest disbursement amount for I-BUILD; and Ifugao for having the highest disbursement amount for I-REAP. These includes all subprojects being implemented by the provincial and municipal implementing units.

As the Project moves on to its 6th year of implementation, Dir. Odsey emphasized the tagline of the DA under Secretary William D. Dar – “masaganang ani, mataaas na kita.”

“This is a challenge not only to you but also to us in the RPCO-CAR that facilitates all of these. So let us all work together and prove that we are not only excellent in making proposals but we are also excellent in implementing and completing our projects,” said Odsey. ||ELVY S. TAQUIO, CARPCO InfoACE

DA-RFO-CAR OIC-Regional Executive and PRDP RPCO Project Director Cameron P. Odsey welcomes the provincial and municipal implementing partners during the Project’s 2019 year-end assessment.

Together with I-BUILD component head Engr. Gaston B. Cael and I-SUPPORT component head Ms. Azon W. Mangal-ip of the RPCO-CAR, OIC-Regional Executive Director and RPCO-CAR Project Director Cameron P. Odsey presents recognition awards to the local government of Mountain Province for having the highest disbursement rate versus target disbursement for both I-REAP and I-BUILD; LGU Kalinga for having the highest disbursement amount for I-BUILD; and LGU Ifugao for having the highest disbursement amount for I-REAP.