Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the project's implementation across Mindanao would be made available to more people, income-generating activities and agricultural infrastructures.
"We will continue to build rural infrastructures such as roads, bridges, and irrigation facilities and we will continuously make efforts to give competent human resources to maintain the program," Yap said.
To cover 27 provinces and 225 municipalities in Mindanao, MRDP2 will run for five years with a total cost of US$123.75 million, including counterparts from the national government and local government units involved and funding from the World Bank.
"Originally, there are five provinces and 32 municipalities in Mindanao which are covered under MRDP-1. Now we are targeting all provinces in Mindanao to join in the project," Yap said.
Projects to be implemented are on agriculture infrastructure, livelihood, environmental conservation, and capacity building.
MRDP2 components are investments for governance reforms and program administration, rural infrastructure, community fund for agricultural development, and natural resource management.
For the rural infrastructure component, a total of 2,150 kilometers of roads are targeted to be rehabilitated during the implementation of MRDP-2.
This year's projects that is ready for implementation measure over 71 kilometers, costing around P128 million. The road length is barely four percent of the targeted 2,150 kilometers to be rehabilitated within the five-year implementation of the project.
Yap said the project is participatory and that DA is the one who drew the entire program objectives and components.
"Kailangan, ang LGUs and sumulat (It’s the LGUs that need to write), so, they can adopt it, the money they wil be using for the development of their project will be directly released to the local government," he said.
Yap also said his agency prioritizes funding for food production. He, however, failed to mention how much is allotted for Mindanao considering it as the food basket of the country.
"I cannot give the exact figure, but Mindanao gets a big chunk of the fund with 35 percent," Yap said.
