THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) has improved monitoring of projects funded by official development assistance (ODA) and now requires all implementing agencies to submit more detailed information on projects with cost overruns.

Neda Deputy Director General Rolando Tungpalan said these more specific information and data would allow them to determine how much of the cost overrun can be attributed to foreign exchange-rate changes, price changes, and duties and taxes, among others.

To date, there are 25 ODA projects with cost overruns due to foreign exchange-rate changes and increases in right-of-way acquisition costs, labor costs, consultancy services costs, administrative costs and material costs.

 Neda data show these 25 projects have a total cost overrun of P30.34 billion. The Department of Public Works and Highways, long lambasted for inefficiency, not surprisingly accounts for the bulk of the increase at 42 percent worth P6.69 billion for 13 projects.

The new requirements were announced after the ICC Cabinet committee approved the added funding requested by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority for the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway Project.

Tungpalan said the Cabinet committee recommended supplemental funding of P6.48 billion. The original budget was P26.33 billion. The cost overrun was attributed to the increase in the price of construction materials, added Tungpalan.

The 93.77-km, four-lane highway is divided into two major sections. The first, or the Subic-Clark section, is 50.5 km long; the second, the Clark-Tarlac section, measures 43.27 km.

Three bridges have to be built—Gumain River Bridge, Pasig-Potrero River Bridge, and Sacobia-Bamban River Bridge—and eight interchanges, 35 minor bridges, one overpass and 36 underpasses.

 In another ICC matter, the investment panel wants to have additional information from Transco on its effort to restore power in all of Bicol under the World Bank-funded Bicol Power Restoration Project.

Tungpalan said the required information has to do with linked work outside of Bicol that is designed to increase reliability of the restoration.

The power restoration will use new steel transmission line towers along the Naga-Labo, Naga-Tiwi C, BacMan-Daraga, and Daraga-Naga and Daraga-Tiwi A lines.

TRADE Secretary Peter B. Favila suspects that the cement giants in the country are probably bloating their financing charges to justify their relatively high prices.

AT least 30 percent of the workers of food and handicraft exporters have been retrenched due to the continued appreciation of the peso against the dollar, Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) president Sergio Ortiz-Luis said.

THE Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) has picked the amendments to the antismuggling law to become its second priority legislation for lobbying in Congress.

PTT Philippines Corp. (PTTPC), the local subsidiary of Thailand’s largest petroleum company, said Monday that it has opened its first fuel depot on Mactan Island, Cebu.

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—In about five years, most of the Subic Bay Freeport will be abloom, and fruits will be dangling from some 7,000 trees that would line up the main roads from the Subic gateway to Cubi Point and up to the Naval Magazine area.

CHANGES and improvements in the country’s Monthly Integrated Survey of Selected Industries (MISSI) will be implemented by 2008, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said.

SPEAKER Jose de Venecia Jr. will propose to the International Monetary Fund the creation of an IMF counterpart in Asia, saying that the recent successes of Asian bonds and swap arrangements among Asian central banks are movements toward a monetary vehicle in the region.

THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) has improved monitoring of projects funded by official development assistance (ODA) and now requires all implementing agencies to submit more detailed information on projects with cost overruns.