Rice production and farmers’ income in this fifth class municipality are expected to increase once the rehabilitation of the communal irrigation system (CIS) and a farm-to-market road in the area are completed.
Biliran Agrarian Reform Officer Elisea Orapa said rehabilitation works by the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) started early last month, and is expected to be completed in three months time.
Orapa cited the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), for rehabilitating the 1.7-kilometer farm-to-market road in Sitio Kasabangan where some 562 meters of this will be concreted for easier and farther conveyance of farm products to the market.
Eliasem Castillo, Regional Director of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Eastern Visayas, said the projects, courtesy of the Japan International Cooperation Agency-Agrarian Reform Infrastructure Support Project (JICA-ARISP), would help double farm produce of farmer-beneficiaries in the Balaquid Agrarian Reform Community (ARC).
Castillo added that the two projects cost about P8-million, with the local government unit providing 50 percent as its counterpart equity.
Ismael Aya-ay, chief of the Beneficiaries Development Coordinating Division (BDCD) of the DAR-Biliran said that about 60 of the 530 ARBs in the ARC will directly benefit from the irrigation project, while some 1,686 residents here and in nearby villages will be benefited by the farm-to-market road.
ARCs are group of barangays with farmers awarded with land titles where there is a convergence of support services provided by the national and local governments, non-government organizations and foreign-donor communities. PAS, DAR
