MINDANAO Sustainable Agrarian and Agriculture Development (Minsaad) partners have affirmed their commitment to sustain the projects and assistance in Mindanao after signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) Thursday, June 6 at the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) Davao Region office in Davao City.
The collaboration was an initiative of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to ensure that the inter-agency assistance will be continued beyond Minsaad’s project timeline. The Minsaad is a special project of DAR funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) and the government of the Philippines which will close its projects this July 2019.
Partner agencies and offices will be providing a variety of assistance like capacity-building initiatives, provision of post-harvest equipment and practices, marketing support and product development support.
“The very purpose is to sustain what they had started. We, in the DTI, would be very happy to provide interventions to sustain the projects. Please count on us,” DTI Compostela Valley Provincial Director Lucky Siegfred Balleque said during the Kapihan sa PIA media forum Thursday.
He added that there was no specific financial commitment with Minsaad, only interventions for continuity of assistance.
DAR-Davao project manager Eduardo Suaybaguio said that the total project cost for Minsaad is around P4.4 billion for the six-year implementation from 2012 to 2018.
This resulted to 11,620 agribusiness development, 12 irrigation systems, 58 post-harvest facility, farm to market roads and bridges construction and rehabilitation, and series of farmers’ trainings.
Minsaad partners that signed the MOU are the Caraga, Davao Region, and Soccsksargen offices of the Department of Agriculture (DA), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Science and Technology (DOST), and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). Other partners include DA-PRDP Project Support Office and concerned Provincial or Municipal Local Government Units, DTI-Rural Agro-Enterprise Partnership for Inclusive Development (Rapid), ACDI/VOCA, Cooperative Development Authority, Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and the Phil Fiber Industry Development Authority. (LHC)