The loan for CHARMP II, which is in addition to a grant of $ 561,000, represented 41 percent of the total project cost of $ 66.44 million. CHARMP II is to be implemented in seven years.

Other funds for the program will be in the form of loans that will be secured from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Fund for International Development.

These cover 30 percent of the project. The national government will shoulder eight percent of the total cost.

Furthermore, local government units (LGUs) benefitting from the agricultural development projects will put up 13 percent as counterpart fund and in-kind beneficiary contribution equivalent to eight percent.

The financing agreement was signed recently in Rome, Italy by IFAD Vice President Kanayo Nwanze and Philippine Ambassador to Italy Philippe Lhuillier.

CHARMP II, which is an initiative of the Regional Development Council (RDC) in the Cordillera, covers 170 barangays in 37 municipalities of the six provinces of the region.

The program is expected to benefit at least 12,500 households.

It aims to increase the income of poor families through sustainable agricultural development and enhance the living standards of the targeted beneficiaries by improving land tenure, food security, and watershed conservation.

Agriculture stakeholders said agricultural development will not mean expansion of agricultural activities that intrude into forest and watershed areas, but with the help of the farmers, the program will assist in producing vegetables and agroforest products that will be sold in the global market.

CHARMP II will also fund agriculture-related infrastructure projects such as irrigation systems and farm-to-market roads which are expected to speed up the delivery of goods from the farm to the market.

Even though infrastructure support will be concentrated in poor villages, priority will still be given to communities with sustainable watershed areas to support irrigation systems.

Earlier, the RDC hailed the Department of Agriculture (DA) for its relentless efforts at pushing for the release of foreign funds for the project so that poor farmers can benefit from the intervention programs of the government for the promotion of sustainable agriculture in the rural communities.

The first phase of CHARMP covered five municipalities in this province where natural resource management programs were initiated and agricultural support services were delivered to the farmers.

It funded various infrastructure projects that included improvement of farmto-market roads with a total length of almost 48 kilometers. CHARMP also constructed 15 irrigation projects that supply water to some 1,120 hectares of farms.