The national government is keen on pursuing more public-private partnership (PPP) projects to meet its goal of increasing infrastructure spending to 5 percent of local output, or the gross domestic product (GDP).
National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Director General and Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said the government will continue to seek out partnerships with the private sector on infrastructure development.
“As we ramp up our public infrastructure-spending target to at least 5 percent of the GDP by 2016, the government, through its PPP Program, will continue to tap the private sector as partners in development to help overcome our resource constraints, deliver much-needed social services and public infrastructure facilities and, importantly, to help sustain the robust economic growth that we have been enjoying in recent times,” Balisacan said in a statement.
Balisacan said that, to date, the Philippines’s PPP Program has a pipeline of about 50 PPP projects worth over $23 billion.
Around nine PPP contracts have also been successfully awarded to the private sector since 2011, totaling to around $3 billion, or P136.36 billion.
To support the PPP Program in the coming years, Balisacan said the government is pushing for the enactment of the PPP Act, or Amendments to the Revised Build-Operate-and-Transfer Law.
Balisacan said the government is also seeking to amend the law on Right of Way Acquisition that would address bottlenecks in infrastructure provision, including implementation delays in our PPP projects.
“We are continuously working to streamline processes and institutionalize reforms and best practices. In particular, we have advocated measures to further enhance the legal and policy environment for private-sector participation,” Balisacan said.
The Philippine government is currently conducting a PPP Policy Dialogue with the Australian government in Melbourne, Australia.
The dialogue should help unlock useful insights on how other jurisdictions sustained their PPP Program over the years, including an understanding of their PPP legal and institutional frameworks, appraisal methodologies, procurement policies, and implementation and monitoring of projects.
Representatives from the Philippine government included Public Works Secretary Rogelio L. Singson and PPP Center Executive Director Cosette V. Canilao, as well as partners from the Australian government, such as the Minister for Small Business, Innovation and Trade of the State Government of Victoria Adem Somyurek.