THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) expects that around five of the country’s development partners are set to begin their multiyear bilateral cooperation frameworks with the Philippines in 2012.
Neda Deputy Director General for Investment Programming Rolando G. Tungpalan told reporters that these foreign partners are the People’s Republic of China, the government of Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), the Australian government and the government of Spain.
Tungpalan said the development cooperation frameworks with these partners will be within three to five years and will involve a mix of loans and grants, except for Australia whose official development assistance (ODA) usually comes in the form of grants.
“Following the approval of the PPP [public-private partnership] initiative and the finalization of the PIP [Public Investment Program], in the last quarter of this year, we will gear up our bilateral discussions toward firming up a multiyear program for the next three to five years. The Neda as [the government’s] overall investment programming [has the] responsibility [to] identify, in the case of bilateral sources, where comparative advantage of these countries would be,” Tungpalan said.
Tungpalan said the multiyear framework with China, which was signed this month by the President in his first state visit, is set to take effect in January 2012. He said the framework with China will run from 2012 to 2016.
The Neda, Tungpalan said, is now in discussion with the Chinese government on Annex 1 of the framework. This will contain the various projects that will be financed in the next few years through Chinese ODA.
Tungpalan said ODA from China will have a grant component for project preparation but the rest of its assistance to the Philippines will be in the form of loans. Loans from China as of 2010 amounted to $1.141 billion, or 11.34 percent, of the total as of 2010.
Discussions with the governments of Korea and Spain are also ongoing. Tungpalan said the government is hoping that it will be able to sign a multiyear development cooperation with Spain to finance projects in the next three years.
Loans and grants from Korea and Spain amounted to $276.99 million and $68.84 million, respectively. In the case of Korea, the bulk of the amount, $206.33 million was extended as a loan, the same with Spain where the loan component of its assistance was at $47.63 million.
“There are still grants [from Spain] but we want to scale up because we already have the capacity to borrow. Mura din humiram ngayon,” the Neda official said.
Tungpalan said the same goes in the country’s partnership with Japan, the largest source of ODA loans. The Neda, he said, is also in the process of discussing a multiyear ODA program with the Japanese government. In 2010 ODA loans from Japan amounted to $3.51 billion, or 35 percent, of the $10.063 billion total ODA loan commitments. It also accounted for $5.717 billion, or 53 percent, of total ODA loans for the past 10 years pegged at around $10.815 billion.
In the case of ODA from Australia, Tungpalan said, this will mostly be in the form of grants. These days, he said, Australia is the country’s largest source of grants. ODA grants from Australia amounted to $621.66 million, which is 28 percent of the total grants worth $2.248 billion as of 2010.
While the Neda could not provide cost estimates for the possible amount of the assistance to be extended by these countries, it earlier estimated that the national government needs to raise P140.41 billion to finance foreign-assisted projects between 2011 and 2015.
