FINANCE Secretary Carlos Dominguez III took exception to the claim of the World Bank that the pace of infrastructure projects in the Philippines was slow that compelled the multilateral lender to reduce the growth forecast for the Philippines this year to 6.6 percent from the previous estimate of 6.8 percent.
Dominguez said in a briefing the World Bank made a “wrong estimate,” stressing infrastructure projects currently funded through overseas development assistance were quicker to implement than through the public-private partnership scheme practiced during the previous administration.
“All I can say is they made a wrong estimate… You know I had a long discussion
recently with people who are saying why we are doing this, the BBB [“Build, Build, Build”], the ODA instead of PPP. I told them our studies showed that the average PPP took 29 months to implement,” Dominguez said.
He cited that one PPP project—the CALAX (Cavite-Laguna Expressway)—took 50 months to implement. And while people in the government were arguing on why the project took too long to implement, Dominguez said, the people “were suffering.”
“And we have proven that we can do an ODA project in 18 months. We started our administration in July [2016], by December of this year we are going to break ground on the Clark project. And that is shorter than you guys can do it,” Dominguez said.
“So we are doing it fast… So we have been trying to do our projects as quickly as we can. Now I don’t know what the assumptions of the World Bank are… they did not disclose to us how they assumed how fast it will be. But I am saying we are already faster than before in implementing our projects because precisely we are willing to take the construction risk… ,” Dominguez said.
In a report early this week, the World Bank said it downgraded its growth forecast for the Philippines this year to 6.6 percent from the previous estimate of 6.8 percent made last July, citing the sluggish pace of the government’s infrastructure program weighing on economic expansion.
In its East Asia and Pacific Economic Update report for the month of October, the bank, however, said the 6.6-percent growth for this year would be strong enough to continue outperforming most of its peers in the region.
“In 2017, the [Philippine] economy is projected to expand at a slightly slower pace than 2016, at 6.6 percent. The delay in the anticipated push of the planned government infrastructure program has been contributing to the moderation of fixed capital formation growth, softening the growth prospect for the year,” World Bank said.
“Nevertheless, it is expected to continue to be the fastest growing of the large Asean economies,” the bank said.
