AROUND 17 kilometers of thoroughfares in three road sections in the southern towns of Pinamungajan and San Fernando, Cebu will soon get a face-lift.

Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia on Monday, Oct. 28, 2019, signed the contract of agreement with Rovilla Construction for the road improvement and concreting works in the Guimbawan-Anislag road section in Pinamungajan and the Sangi-Bugho road section in San Fernando.

The project in Pinamungajan costs P4.7 million and it will take 40 calendar days to finish. Road works in San Fernando, on the other hand, cost P31.9 million and is expected to be completed in 152 calendar days.

In an interview last Tuesday, Oct. 29, Garcia said the budget for the road works came from the Conditional Matching Grant to Provinces (CMGP) program of the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

The CMGP is an incentive-based program to encourage provincial governments to invest more on road management. It aims to improve the state of local roads and connect these to national road networks in order to enhance local and regional productivity “easing out value chain bottlenecks in agriculture, tourism and manufacturing.”

“This is not part of the supplemental (budget). This is CMGP. This was already budgeted for this year. It’s just that the documents were not completed then. When I assumed office, we worked on the lacking documents so that we can proceed with the bidding,” Garcia said.

Garcia said the Capitol will also work on road concreting of some 66 kilometers of provincial roads spread across the seven districts under the P1.38 billion supplemental budget, which was approved on Aug. 5, 2019.

The biggest slice of the pie will go to the construction, improvement and rehabilitation program for roads and bridges at P800 million.

Once approved, the proposed P12 billion annual budget for 2020 would also cover road improvement projects. The Capitol’s economic services for 2020 would focus on infrastructure projects. With P3.98 billion, economic services cover 33.19 percent of next year’s proposed budget. RTF