EU envoys inspect EC-funded projects in South

The ambassadors of the European Union (EU) and the delegation head of the European Commission to the Philippines are visiting selected provinces in Central Mindanao to inspect EC-funded agricultural projects for three days starting today.

Ambassador Jan De Kok, EC delegation head, leads the EU mission that will monitor the implementation of the Support to Agrarian Reform Communities in Central Mindanao (STARCM).

De Kok is joined by his wife, Agnes, Ambassadors Herbert Jagger and Martina Corrado (Austria), Gregoire Vardakis (Belgium), Jaroslav Ludva (Czech Republic), Riitta Resch (Finland), Rubens Fedele (Italy), Joao Caetano Da Silva (Portugal), Peter and Jill Beckingham (United Kingdom), Annika and Drasko Markovic (Sweden), and Radu Homescu (Romania).

Joining them are officials of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

The EU ambassadors are meeting with Governors Zaldy Ampatuan (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao), Emmanuel Piñol (North Cotabato), Pax Mangudadatu (Sultan Kudarat), and Daisy Avance-Fuentes (South Cotabato), and Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Secretary Jesus Dureza, who also chairs the Mindanao Economic Development Council (MEDCO).

STARCM is an EC project funding agricultural, capacity-building and infrastructure requirements in DAR-identified agrarian reform communities.

The EC has provided the project with funding of 18.422 million euros (about P1.161 billion), with a counterpart fund of about P310 million from the Philippine government, local government units and people’s organizations.

The EU ambassadors are inspecting STARCM initiatives ranging from potable water systems to vegetable production, pal moil cultivation machinery, carabao dispersal, swine-raising and goat raising sub-projects, and fish and vegetable production ventures in North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.

They are also visiting projects for internally displaced persons in Midsayap, North Cotabato and Datu Montawal and Buluan, both in Maguin—danao.

These projects are in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program and MEDCO under the GoP-UNDP-EC Program on Rehabilitating Internally Displaced Persons and Communities in the Southern Philippines.

A trip to a Belgian-assisted Income-Generating Projects Association in Barangay Waan, Buhangin district in Davao City is also included in the ambassadors’ itinerary.

The Waan group is one of nine cooperatives which provide their members with small loans for income-generating projects.

De Kok said these EU projects reaffirm the EU-Philippine partnership to alleviate poverty in the country’s poorest provinces through multisectoral interventions.