As part of her first project visit as World Bank’s new country director, Mara Warwick visited cacao farmers in Mindanao and granted new funding for the country’s cacao sector. Mindanao supplies bulk of the country’s cacao production. Warwick and her team met with beneficiaries of the recently approved P26 million Cacao Production and Dry-fermented beans marketing in Davao, a project implemented under the Department of Agriculture’s Philippine Rural Development Project (DA-PRDP). DA-PRDP is a six-year rural development project worth P27.5 billion. The program was funded through a loan from World Bank worth P20.56 billion and P7-billion counterpart from the Government of the Philippines (GOP) and local government units (LGUs). World Bank logo “This is the very first project I’ve visited [in the Philippines],” Warwick said. With her are PRDP task team leader and WB Senior rural Development Economist Frauke Jungbluth, lead economist Aleksandra Posarac, and senior communications officer Dave Llorito. [...]
