Ex-ante analysis of PCAARRD [Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development] Industry Strategic S and T [science and technology] Plans (ISP) for crops, livestock (swine)

This research involved doing a before-the-fact economic appraisal of the likely benefits and costs of executing the Swine ISP. The said ISP [Industry Strategic S and T [science and technology] Plans] contains S and T interventions embodied in two research programs and three stand-alone projects, with a total budget of Php 101 million for implementation from 2011 to 2015. The baselines, benchmarks and targets set by the ISP were generally reasonable and technically feasible. However, the issue of timing of delivery of project outputs in order to reach the 2020 targets is a significant concern. The time horizon involved in the ISP's production of technologies and their adoption along the commodity chain are not in sync with the target dates of industry impact realization. The mapping of impact pathways of the ISP projects showed the difficulty in assuming that S&T outputs can easily deliver the envisioned results. The targeted outcomes of the ISP were found to be too far from project reach. There are many crucial post-project relay activities beyond the control of the interventions, and technology transfer and utilization are subject to the behavior of private actors which cannot be assumed to be favorable. Assuming project success and that the technical, financial and market constraints along the impact pathways are overcome, the cost-benefit analysis showed that the investments on the ISP can bring fair rates of return. However, bottlenecks along the impact pathways affect the economic viability of the R&D investments, and many critical activities related to technology delivery and adoption�which can determine economic success�are beyond the scope of the ISP. It is recommended that future ISPs should consider the temporal dimension of the entire research and development process. Periodic milestones would be useful to track not only technology development, but vital forward activities beyond the project. Also, the ISP designers should already build the impact pathways and understand the important issues along them before the plans are approved. Finally, ex ante studies would stand to benefit when farm-level data such as on production, costs-and returns, market prices, and adoption are compiled and made available. Fresh studies along these areas (especially on adoption) would serve as important inputs in ex ante evaluation of proposed projects.