The COVID-19 outbreak may affect the process of China granting official development assistance (ODA) loans to the Philippines as travel constraints prevent officials of both countries from meeting.
This will further delay the processing of China ODA-funded projects.
Ernesto Pernia, socioeconomic planning secretary, told reporters at the House of Representatives earlier this week that with the travel ban in place due to the COVID-19, it becomes harder for Philippine and Chinese officials to meet to discuss possible ODA loans.
“We need to meet, to have regular meetings, but it’s difficult (to do that) now because we cannot go to China,” Pernia said.
“There would have been a meeting for (more) projects in Beijing,” he added.
Pernia previously said the strict process involved in scrutinizing loans from China for the Philippines’ infrastructure projects has led to a “rather slow” flow of ODA from that country.
He had said a screening system was put in place on the Philippines’ and China’s side to make sure that companies interested to participate in infrastructure projects in the Philippines are not questionable or do not have a bad record.
They should not be blacklisted, for example, with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Last December, the Department of Finance (DOF) said newly appointed Chinese ambassador to Manila Huang Xilian has committed to institutionalize the conduct of regular meetings between the Philippines and China to thresh out issues involving the administration’s big-ticket infrastructure and development projects that are being implemented with funding support from China.
The DOF said Huang made this commitment in response to the proposal of Carlos Dominguez, DOF secretary, to hold regular dialogues between high-level officials of the Philippines and China to address such concerns.
The Philippine government however has banned travel to and from China, as well as Hong Kong, Macau and most recently, Taiwan, as part of measures to prevent the COVID-19 from spreading.
“They’re (China) going to have a lot of spending, at the time when the economy is slowing… so that might be a constraint?” Pernia also said.
According to the DOF, since the start of the Duterte presidency in 2016, the Philippines and China have so far signed three loan agreements amounting to $493.08 million. The Philippines has also secured a total of $430.82 million-worth of grants from China since 2016.
