Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 23) – Thousands of projects worth trillions of pesos are set for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s approval next month, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said Thursday.
That list is quite a big number of projects, tentatively talking about 3,700 projects worth ₱15 trillion in the medium term,” NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said during a Makati Business Club forumThe list includes projects initially prepared by previous administrations and some projects that were returned to the proponents.A total of 98 projects, worth about ₱3 trillion, may be undertaken through public-private partnership (PPP), Balisacan said.On March 9, hopefully the president will approve of the entire list. It’s bearing the entire list and we have already identified what are likely PPPs but we are open to accommodating any of those as candidates for PPP,” he said.Late in December, NEDA said the Marcos administration is committed to pursuing more PPPs for infrastructure.Balisacan said tapping the private sector is “the way to go” as the national government “has no money.We have very limited resources, fiscal space is very narrow because a lot of responses to the pandemic have raised the level of debt. While some say there’s some space, personally I don’t think so,” he said.The only way we can sustain massive infrastructure development is to get the private sector,” he added.
