The Agriculture Department said it will exercise strict measures to prioritize infrastructure projects under the Philippine Rural Development Project with an additional P7.9-billion financing from the World Bank.
The loan represents the first tranche of the $450-million additional financing sought by the department for the government’s various expansion programs. The loan is estimated to cover part of the pipelined sub-projects that cost around P15.56 billion.
Agriculture Undersecretary Ariel Cayanan said that the prioritization scheme would help rationalize the programming and budgeting process of infrastructure development projects.
“The pipelined subprojects”•our ‘healthy’ pipeline as we call it”•have already complied with the requirements such as feasibility study, detailed engineering design, and social and environmental safeguards but as we are currently challenged by limited budget, the best way to approach this is to fund the best proposals based on a set of criteria,” Cayanan said.
