VILLANUEVA, Misamis Oriental – The provincial government will go one notch higher in its local development planning and poverty incidence monitoring when it begins utilizing GIS-aided information and data base for its program planning and anti-poverty campaign. This came after energy-firm Steag State Power Inc. (SPI) announced the approval of the P5.87-million financial grant for the implementation of the Community-Based Monitoring System or CBMS covering all the 25 municipalities and component cities in Misamis Oriental. The project is funded out of the provincial government’s share in a social fund that accrues from the electricity sales of SPI pursuant to ER 1-94 of the Department of Energy (DOE). CBMS is a tool designed to help LGUs diagnose the extent and causes of poverty in their respective localities and help them come-up with policies and programs to effectively address them. CBMS incorporates the design and methodology for data collection and processing, validation and utilization. The project aims to identify the province’s state of development and poverty gaps using the indicators of the UN-declared Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), establish baseline information for socio-economic investment programming, improve provincial land use planning, tax mapping and hazard identification in support of the province’s disasterisk reduction efforts. The project, which will be implemented through the Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO), is expected to be completed in May 2016. SPI’s assistance is part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, one component of which is the Egold (Enhancing Governance in Local Development) Program. In 2011, SPI supported a similar initiative when it launched the Project Empowering (Project Enhanced Monitoring System on poverty watch for a more Effective and Responsive Approach in Governance) directly benefitting six LGUs in Misamis Oriental.