Monday, September 25, 2017

Govt to finish 37 flagship projects by 2022–DOF

The Department of Finance (DOF) said around half of the 75 flagship projects that the government plans to roll out will be completed by the time President Duterte steps down from office in 2022.

According to Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, about 37 projects under the “Build, Build, Build” (BBB) program will be completed by the year 2022.

“Obviously, not all [will be completed], like the subway. It can’t be finished by 2022,” Dominguez said in a forum held recently.

“But the rest will be ongoing, because they are not projects that you can do immediately,” he added.

Dominguez said he expects the expansion of the Clark International Airport, the Clark-Manila railway and the Mindanao railway to be among the flagship projects that would be completed in five years.

“No. 1 is the Clark airport that will be finished. A good portion of the Clark to Manila railway will be finished, and the third one will probably be a good portion of the Mindanao railway,” he said. The Mindanao railway project—spanning from Tagum, Davao and Digos cities—requires a budget of P31.544 billion, while the Clark International Airport Expansion (Phase 1) costs P12.55 billion. The Philippine National Railways’s (PNR) North 1 project, which is a 38-kilometer mass-transportation railway that will connect City of Malolos, Bulacan with the National Capital Region (NCR), costs P105.31 billion.

As for the P227-billion Mega Manila Subway project, Dominguez said it would take time for boring machines to dig a tunnel underground.  The DOF chief also assured that the rehabilitation of MRT-3 is ongoing despite perceptions that it is moving at a snail’s pace.

“I assure you the MRT-3 project is moving. As people know,  when you do a lot of projects, it takes a bit of time for everything to fall in place and get going,” he said.

Earlier, the DOF said the Investment Coordination Committee-Cabinet Committee is set to recommend to the National Economic and Development Authority board the further streamlining of the approval process for big-ticket projects funded by official development assistance loans to help fast-track the pursuit of flagship infrastructure projects.

Approval of the new “3-in-one” streamlined process by the Neda board will reduce the time to assess the financing leg of projects, according to Dominguez.

No comments:

Post a Comment