Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
The Department of Agriculture (DA) and the World Bank (WB) will be opening a loan facility to fund projects that would help food-producing regions adapt to extreme climate change.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said the DA and the World Bank are working on a credit facility called the Central Philippines Rural Development Program (CPRDP), which would support investment and infrastructure development in regions fronting the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), which are vulnerable to rising sea levels and stronger storms.
The program is similar to the WB’s Mindanao Rural Development Program (MRDP), which has funded nearly 500 rural infrastructure projects in the region.
The key difference, however, between the two projects is the focus on climate change resiliency, a WB official said in a briefing recently.
“The conditionality of the Central Philippines program is climate change adaptation,” Felizardo Virtucio Jr., task leader of MRDP said.
Alcala said he wants to open the program by 2013, noting that it is imperative to strengthen the Central Philippines against extreme weather threats as it remains the country’s food bowl.
He noted that the priority regions of CPRDP are Regions IV-A, IV-B, V, VI, VII and VIII.
These provinces, which have considerable livestock and poultry industries, are usually in the path of the typhoons that hit the country every year.
Those in Central Luzon produce the bulk of the country’s rice and vegetables.
Alcala said the storms that pummeled these regions recently had decreased the country’s farm output for the fourth quarter. At the start of the year, the DA said it expected agricultural growth to hit around 4.5 percent in 2011. Last week, Alcala downgraded this, saying farm growth could be between 3 and 3.5 percent. He blamed the typhoons for the decrease, pointing that about a million hectares of farmland were destroyed.
Officials said the CPRDP will be similar to MRDP, which mandates that local government units must share in the cost of the project. According to the WB, the LGU must provide 50 percent of equity to be able to get assistance.