The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) identified more than 3,600 infrastructure projects in its pipeline, with 206 eyed to be started in the short-term.
This developed as the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in a report said the national government’s expenditures for infrastructure and other capital outlays in November posted a sharp increase of 38.4 percent in November.
NEDA secretary Arsenio Balisacan said during the Philippine Economic Briefing held in Frankfurt, Germany Monday evening the current administration is working to ramp up the infrastructure development of the country.
“We are working on five to six percent of gross domestic product going to infrastructure development, comparatively that’s quite high in relation to the past two to three decades experience of the country,” Balisacan said.
He added the government will be releasing this quarter the public investment program for 2023-2028 as well as a three-year rolling infrastructure program for 2024 to 2026.
“As of today… various agencies of government have identified for this public investment program over 3,600 projects, that amounts to something like $372 billion over the medium term,” Balisacan said.
Out of the said number of projects, Balisacan said that more than 180 have costs exceeding $45 million, which means that these projects would have to go through to the approval process of the government.
“Now out of these 3,600 projects, we are looking at a short-term list, what we call the infrastructure flagship projects that we would want to see implemented, completed, at least started during the administration, and these projects are chosen for the responsiveness to the goals of the Philippine Development Plan, that they are part of the master plans of our key agencies, and that these hold national significance,” Balisacan said.
He said these projects eyed for the short-term now total to 206 products worth $159 billion.
He said these are in various sectors, with 136 in physical connectivity, nine are in digital connectivity, 42 in water resources, eight in health, two in power and energy, among others.
“As of the end of last month, we have… in the pipeline for public private partnerships already 87 projects, and these amount to $54 billion. The projects that I mentioned earlier, these 206 that would go into what we call the Macros administration infrastructure flagship projects, many of these would also likely be in the form of public private partnerships,” Balisacan said.
“So I think with those projects we’ll see a major transformation of the physical landscape of the country in the next six years. And, again, there’s a lot of opportunities for the business community including those outside the Philippines,” he added. According to the report posted on the DBM’s website, infrastructure spending rose to P80.2 billion in November last year, from the P58 billion recorded in November 2021.
The growth of infrastructure expenditures also accounted for more than half of the P42.3 billion total increase in disbursements for the month.
“The significant expansion was propelled by the completed and partially completed projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways nationwide such as construction, improvement, repair and rehabilitation of roads, bridges and flood control structures, as well as the construction of multi-purpose buildings,” the DBM said.
“Likewise, capital expenditures related to various projects under the Revised Armed Forces of the Philippines Modernization Program ramped up infrastructure spending in November 2022,” it added.
Year-to-date, infrastructure spending went up by 14.3 percent to P869.2 billion from P760.4 billion in January to November 2021.
It was earlier reported that the government’s total disbursements for November 2022 grew by 10.2 percent to reach P455 billion from P412.7 billion the prior year.
For the 11-month period, total expenditures stood at P4.51 trillion, 9.9 percent up from the previous year’s P4.11 trillion.
