found to be sensitive to the respective number of landless farmers and the agricultural landholding Gini of the provinces. (2)
The LAD profile of the ARCs indicate that most of the CARP lands covered by ARCs are GOL, settlement, VOS, and VLT lands, that are covered by collective CLOAs. While DAR managed to cover a substantial area and number of ARBs, these areas were not particularly sensitive to addressing inequality and landlessness. The collective titles would also have an effect in the transformation process of the ARBs, as they would impact in the ability of the farmer to access credit, among others.
(3)
ARC interventions, particularly from the FAPs (which form the bulk of ARC financing) were concentrated in specific provinces, indicating an imbalance in the allocation of development resources. We see very little differentiation in the type of interventions provided across provincial clusters, indicating that interventions were mostly “package type” with a set menu of projects/activities. This would limit DAR’s ability to provide the differential interventions needed to address the differences in the respective characteristics and potential of the ARCs within the clusters.
Taken together, the findings indicate the importance of proper selection and targeting of ARC barangays and the interventions provided therein. Had this been the case, there might have been better outcomes in the ARCs and larger gains compared with non-ARC counterparts. The provincial typology used in the analysis indicates that the configuration of the interventions provided to the ARCs should be consistent with the character and development potentials of the provinces. Pathways out of poverty will differ across the different clusters. This will largely determine the mix and degree of interventions to be provided. Indeed, a “package” of interventions is needed for ARC development, but the “package” should differ in terms of the size and mix of its contents. These should be carefully considered in program level planning and in proposing for ODA programs. The number of foreign donors and the amount of grants and loans they have provided for ARC development is a welcome prospect. However, there are several caveats to this. First, donor biases in terms of the geographical focus and the mix of interventions might result in sub-optimal allocation of resources. Second, ODA financing crowds out local resources since counterpart funds are required. Hence, while DAR was able to raise almost Php50 billion in ODA funds, it also had to allocate P18.7 billion in counterpart funds. This money could have been used to fund the non-FAPs ARCs that were not provided with generous ODA funds. Instead, the money was used in the same ARCs that were covered by FAPs. This would further lessen the funds available for the already resource-constrained non-FAPs ARCs. This ultimately might result in a perverse situation since the objective of ODA is to complement limited local resources for ARC development.
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