ILOILO CITY — Western Visayas got the biggest budget share for farm-to-market road (FMR) projects this 2018, according to the top executive of the Department of Agriculture (DA) here.
Engr. Remelyn Recoter, DA regional executive director, on Monday said that Western Visayas was allotted PHP1.1 billion the biggest among all regions in the country.
The huge chunk goes to Antique, particularly in Lauan town, which has more or less PHP200 million.
The province of Negros Occidental also got a bigger share of the pie. The rest are for FMR projects in the other provinces of Western Visayas.
Recoter said that the huge budget is “beneficial to the region” considering that their initial request was only PHP351 million. This means that more or less 100 kilometers of farm-to-market roads to be established from the original 35 kilometers only, she said.
The fund will be downloaded directly to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).
The DA will be in-charge of the initial activities such as validation and geo-tagging. It will also handle the monitoring of the progress of the project. Recoter said there are new road sections identified to be funded by the additional budget.
This month and early February, DA’s engineering division will have to sit down with the district offices of the DPWH to work on the validation of the projects.
Recoter said that they just have to request for an increase in their budget as they need to also hire additional people to cope with the number of projects needed to be monitored. (PNA)
