Transportation costs for crops will be drastically reduced once the 4.9-kilometer agricultural road carved atop the mountainous municipality of Banaue in Ifugao is completed, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.

"The Viewpoint-San Fernando farm-to-market (FMR) road subproject has hit a significant milestone, as work is now about 52.29 percent completed," the DA said Monday, May 24.

A total of 362 households or 1,841 individuals in barangay Viewpoint and San Fernando will benefit from the road project once it is finished.

The current transportation cost of P200 is expected to be slashed to as little as P25. This will come with the significant reduction in travel time, which will be down to 30 minutes from the previous two hours.

It is also seen to increase new agricultural area by 4.01 hectares (ha) and decrease transport losses at an average of three percent for all crops.

Edwin B. Camhit, the DA-Philippine Rural Development Project's rural infrastructure engineer, bared that the excavation and widening of roadway in the subproject site--including the 19 stations of stone masonry slope protection, two stations of retaining/breast walls, and installed five cross drainages--are almost complete.

“More than one kilometer of the designed two-lane FMR at the end part of the subproject was already concreted,” Camhit said.

The entire project is being implemented under a P124.8-million fund shared by loan proceeds from the World Bank (WB),, DA, and the local government of Banaue.

It will be assessed in the upcoming WB Implementation Support Mission (WBISM) scheduled to start on May 24, the DA said.

A full-blown documentation of the road project is now being conducted using available digital resources, which will be presented virtually during the assessment by the WB.