By virtue of Executive Order (EO) No. 114, s. 2020, the Balik Probinsya, Bagong Pag-asa (BP2) Program was institutionalized by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte as a pillar of balanced regional development. The Program recognized that cities like Metro Manila and Metro Cebu account for a significant portion of the Philippine gross domestic product. Similarly, their populations constitute a huge share of the country’s total population based on the 2015 national census. Thus, implying an imbalanced concentration of people in these cities while inequality and lack of opportunities are evident in the countryside.
Utilizing the whole-of-nation approach, the BP2 Program aims to attain balanced regional development and equitable distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunities in the regions through policies and programs that boost sustainable countryside development and promote more inclusive growth around the country through convergence with the private sector and civil society. Put simply, the government, in close coordination with the private sector and civil society, will focus on rural development to decongest the metropolitan cities and to encourage the provinces to be more competitive.
To ensure synergy in the implementation of the BP2 Program, the BP2 Council and Regional BP2 Committees were created. In Eastern Visayas, the BP2 Committee was organized under the Regional Development Council (RDC) VIII through RDC VIII Resolution No. 26, s. 2020. Among the primary functions of the Regional BP2 Committee is the formulation of the BP2 Action Plan.
This Action Plan has 11 main parts and one Annex. After this introduction, a briefer on the Eastern Visayas situation follows to give spatial context to this document. The BP2 framework, strategic goals, regional committee, and plan formulation process will be discussed in Part 3. In Part 4, the program beneficiaries will be profiled, followed by the assessment of resources and constraints in the region in Part 5. Part 6 will focus on the general strategy of the program, while the implementation mechanisms will be tackled thereafter. Funding, monitoring, reporting, and strategic communication also form part of this document. Finally, the annexed list of Programs, Projects, and Activities (PPAs), the heart of this document, wraps up this Action Plan.