Roi Anthoni B. Lomotan
NEGROS ORIENTAL, May 18 (PIA) – Government officers in the
province, together with members of Negros Oriental Chamber of
Commerce and Industry (NOCCI), have come up with a criteria for prioritizing
Strategic Roads and Infrastructure Investments (SRII) during a Value Chain
Analysis (VCA) criteria setting workshop in Dumaguete City recently.
According to Carmencita Cochingco, consultant from The Asia Foundation
(TAF), the criteria establishes the importance of roads and infrastructure
projects to help boost economic activity in the province.
TAF is a non-profit organization that assisted government and
private sector stakeholders in the province in formulating proposals for roads
and infrastructure development projects that will be presented to the
Provincial Development Council (PDC) for approval.
In previous VCA workshops, government and private
sector stakeholders have identified five sectors for economic growth,
namely: tourism, coconut, fisheries, high value crops and livestock,
and poultry sectors.
The criteria will determine which among the roads and
infrastructure projects related to these sectors should be prioritized in
terms of funding and implementation.
Each project will be evaluated under three main points based on
the set criteria: access and connectivity, 30%; productivity,
45%; and disaster risk reduction and gender and development (GAD)
sensitivity, 25%.
For access and connectivity, the sub-criteria are
decrease travel time and cost of transport of goods and services and it
should also increase the value of traffic of different goods.
For tourism, road and infrastructure projects should increase the
traffic of visitors in a specific tourist destination.
On the other hand, the sub-criteria for productivity are increase
volume of production, spur economic activity, increase livelihood opportunities
for Negrenses, reduce the cost of doing business and adaptation of value adding
technology.
The last criteria require projects to be climate change resilient
and GAD sensitive.
Both the government representatives and NOCCI already made a list
of proposed roads and infrastructure projects related to the five sectors of
economic growth in the province.
The next thing for these stakeholders to do is to present these
criteria along with a prioritization scheme to PDC members and Its
Infrastructure committee within the month.
By June, the group will rank these projects by order of priority
as determined by the criteria and the prioritization scheme.
The body hopes to get the endorsement of PDC and Regional
Development Council for funding of said projects by August up to September this
year.
The VCA workshop was attended by officers from the Provincial
Planning and Development Office (PPDO) and the local offices of Philippine
Coconut Authority (PCA), Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR),
Department of Agriculture (DA) and some members of NOCCI. (rmn/ral/PIA7-Negros
Oriental)