Remote and off-grid villages and island communities of Mindanao and Palawan will soon have sources of water for drinking and irrigation.
The Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) and an Israeli Agricultural Company, with the support of the Department of Interior and Local Government, agreed to design a technical and financial plan to provide Mindanao villages with Solar-Powered Water Supply and Desalination Plants.
The Mindanao Rural Water Supply Program (MinDAWater) which MinDA Secretary Manny Piñol and DILG Secretary Eduardo Año are both advocating aims to provide water sources for drinking and agriculture in remote villages and isolated islands.
The project will be funded with an initial $500-M loan which could be directly accessed by local government units at concessional rates through local banks.
“We are designing a new scheme in the financing of LGU projects where they could access loan funds through a partnership between the foreign funders and local banks,” MinDA Chairman Sec. Manny Piñol said.
Yesterday, the MinDA Chairman met with officials of an international agricultural company, the LR Group, to discuss the details of the program.
The LR Group is the same international agriculture corporation which offered to build 6,200 units of Solar-Powered Irrigation System with a back-up financing payable in 15 years with a 3-year grace period.
The LR Group established two proto-types of Solar-Powered Irrigation which are both linked to a computer system and equipped with a fertigation tank in Lumban, Laguna.
The two units were donated by the LR Group when the MinDA Chairman was Secretary of the Department of Agriculture.
As soon as the financial and technical package of the MinDAWater Program is finalized, local government units all over Mindanao and Palawan will be invited to the roll out and project implementation.
The MinDA Chairman identified Water, along with power and rural infrastructure, as the most urgent need of Mindanao and Palawan to increase productivity and address health concerns.
The roll-out of the MinDAWater Program is expected before the end of 2019.(PR)
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