Aquino admin institutionalizing infra project to sustain PHL growth – Purisima

Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima. Photo courtesy of Purisima on Facebook.

MANILA — The Aquino government is confident on the sustained growth of the domestic economy beyond its term as more social infrastructures have been bidded out and are now being implemented and more are still in the pipeline.

Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, in his speech during the Financial Times-First Metro Investment Corp. (FT-FMIC) Philippines Investment Summit Monday, said excluding the emergency power projects put in place during the Ramos administration, the Aquino administration posted the highest number of infrastructure projects implemented so far.

There are about 54 projects listed under the public-private partnership (PPP) initiative of the current administration and seven of these have been awarded.

These seven are the four-kilometer, four-lane DaangHari-SLEX Link Road; PPP for school infrastructure project phase I and II; the four-lane elevated Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Expressway Project, the modernization of the Philippine Orthopedic Center (MPOC), the automatic fare collection system, and the construction of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport passenger terminal building.

The Aquino administration has ensured that needed infrastructure projects are put in place since these are the major economic growth drivers and would ensure that domestic expansion would be inclusive.

Purisima admitted that implementation of these projects cannot be done as fast as everybody wants it to be and not all the projects can be implemented under one administration.

“It’s never fast, quick enough. It can never be done in one administration but one thing that this administration can do is institutionalize the standards,” he said.

“The future is under our control. It is up to us to tell the world that this time is for real,” he said.

At the sidelines of the summit, Purisima said the government will continue to pursue the bidding of the projects but he declined to give specifics.

“The important this is we continue the process and we do it properly,” he added.

Analysts said the slow implementation of the PPP projects is understandably okay because of the reforms put in place to ensure that the projects were property scrutinized.