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THE
Department of Agriculture (DA) has improved its
implementation of the $60-million Diversified Farm
Income and Market Development, officials of the World
Bank (WB) said.
WB
senior operations officer Carol Geron said in an
interview that the DA has improved on its uptake of the
fund. So far, the department has tapped 26 percent of
the total loan amount.
Earlier,
the DA has made the commitment to speed up the
implementation of the project, which seeks to assist
farmers in marketing their produce.
The WB
has singled out the $60-million initiative as one of the
most problematic projects that the bank is currently
implementing in the Philippines.
In its
yearly assessment of all active projects in the
Philippines published in September 2006, the WB noted
that the project is experiencing implementation
difficulties and is lagging behind its physical and
disbursement targets.
“These
lags in implementation progress...are symptomatic of the
difficulties being encountered within and outside of the
DA bureaucracy in pushing for institutional reforms
under a difficult political economy context,” said WB in
its assessment.
The WB
earlier noted that “proactive action” should be taken by
the DA and the oversight agencies in resolving the
causes of the significant lags in implementation.
The
project costs a total of $69.7 million and was supposed
to be implemented by the DA from October 2004 to June
2009. As of June 2006, however, only $3.60 million, or
more than P170 million, has been tapped by the DA out of
the possible loan amount granted by the bank.
The WB
loan for the project has a maturity of 20 years,
including an eight-year grace period. The interest rate
for the loan is around 1.485 percent per year. |
