LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—The Cordillera office of the National Irrigation Administration said Friday P1.36 billion has been earmarked for the implementation of irrigation-related projects regionwide, to boost the agricultural production of farmers in the provinces here next year.
Engineer John Socalo, NIA-CAR regional irrigation manager, said 70 percent of the funds from the national government will be for rehabilitating and upgrading communal irrigation projects, while 20 percent will be used to improve the agency’s national irrigation facilities located in Kalinga, Ifugao and Apayao.
The remaining 10 percent of the funds will be devoted to feasibility studies for future projects, Socalo said. An additional P300 million will be devoted to the convergence initiatives of the NIA-CAR with other regional line agencies.
“We are quite lucky next year because we received a huge amount of funds for the sustained implementation of our mandate, which is to provide adequate irrigation to our farmers in the different parts of the region. We believe we are in the right track of increasing the number of irrigable areas beneficial to the interest of more farmers regionwide,” he stressed.
The NIA-CAR official disclosed some P65 million will go to the Marimay small river irrigation project in Apayao, while another P50 million will go to the Alfonso Lista pump irrigation project in Ifugao.
Socalo said the funding for Alfonso Lista this year will be added to the appropriation for the project next year to complete its important portions and make it operational sooner.
He expressed confidence NIA-CAR will implement the programmed projects next year so that it could gain more funding for their priority projects.
Socalo called on the agency’s partners to cooperate with the policies that will be crafted by the new NIA leadership to help boost the growth of agriculture in the countryside.