The Philippines and the Asian Development Bank on Friday signed three loan agreements worth a combined $623.3 million for programs that aim to enhance the Duterte administration’s capability to implement its “Build, Build, Build” projects, gear up the country’s young workforce for quality jobs, and promote free and fair competition in business.
The three loan packages are the $400-million Facilitating Youth School-to-Work Transition Program, Subprogram 2; $23.3-million Capacity Building to Foster Competition Project; and the $200-million additional financing for the Infrastructure Preparation and Innovation Facility.
Signing the agreements on Friday were Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III and ADB vice president Ahmed Saeed.
The three loan agreements are part of the $10.3 billion in financing support that the ADB committed to provide the Philippines over the medium term.
The ADB has proposed loan financing of $2.5 billion this year and $7.8 billion over the 2020-2021 period. From 2009 to 2019, the ADB’s loan financing to the Philippines amounted to $7.2 billion.
Saeed said the $2.5 billion of the new loan assistance to the Philippines in 2019 “is our highest lending program ever and reflects ADB’s strong commitment to scaling up our support to the Philippines and its development agenda.”
Dominguez said substantial increase in ADB’s loan financing for the Philippines underscored the multilateral institution’s strong support for the Duterte administration’s comprehensive development strategy, anchored on aggressive state spending on infrastructure and human capital, disaster preparedness, tourism, health care and agriculture.
“Let me take this occasion again to thank the ADB for its confidence in our government’s capacity to bring forth bold reforms and undertake ambitious development projects. We will do our utmost not to disappoint your best expectations,” Dominguez said after the signing of the loan agreements.
Saeed expressed hope that the three projects formalized through the signing of the loan accords “will help bring an even closer ADB–Philippines partnership in the years to come.”
Dominguez assured the ADB that the funding support it has provided the Philippines “will be used most efficiently to help realize the Duterte administration’s comprehensive development strategy.”
The Philippines, he said, was at a crucial turning point where it had sustained its high growth, significantly reduced its poverty and unemployment rates, and expected to reach upper-middle income country status way ahead of schedule next year.
“We have decisively broken out of the former boom-and-bust cycle that inhibited our projects in the past. We are consolidating for rapid and inclusive growth well into the foreseeable future,” said Dominguez.
The additional financing for the Infrastructure Preparation and Innovation Facility will enable the Philippine government to undertake engineering and feasibility studies for major “Build, Build, Build projects,” such as the Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge, Samal Island-Davao City Connector Bridge, Mindanao Railway Project, Metro Manila Subway, Subic-Clark Railway, North-South Commuter Railway System and the Metro Rail Transit (MRT)-Line 4 from Ortigas in Metro Manila to Taytay, Rizal.