ODA loans up 39% to $11.3B in Q4 2014

MANILA, Philippines - The overall net commitment for official development assistance (ODA) funded projects and programs jumped 39 percent to $11.29 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014 from the $8.11 billion in the same period in 2013.

According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the net commitment consists of 13 program loans amounting to $4.09 billion and 62 project loans amounting to $7.21 billion.

Not surprisingly, the infrastructure sector had the largest share of total commitments with 40.2 percent.

The World Bank was the biggest source of loans with a 39.5-percent share amounting to $4.46 billion followed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) with $3.41 billion (30.2 percent) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with $2.23 billion (19.8 percent).

The total assistance from the said three sources of loans amounting to $10.10 billion constitutes 89 percent of the total 2014 portfolio.

Meanwhile, the disbursement level for projects and programs funded through ODA has tripled to $1.62 billion in the fourth quarter of last year from $546.36 million in the same period in 2013.

NEDA Monitoring and Evaluation Staff (MES) director Roderick M. Planta said that all absorptive capacity indicators registered favorable performance.

“This includes the disbursement level, disbursement rate, availment rate, and the disbursement ratio,” Planta said in a statement.

The strong availment rate was caused by higher actual loan drawdown from 13 program loans amounting to $1.1 billion from $182.60 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.

The disbursement rate, or the actual disbursement level as a percentage of target disbursement for the year, increased to 68.3 percent in 2014 from 50.3 percent in 2013.

Though this was below the acceptable 70-percent threshold, for a satisfactory financial performance for a given year, the disbursement rate was a significant improvement compared to 2013 figure.

The availment rate, or the percentage of loan amount’s actual utilization against loan schedule, likewise improved and still exceeded the threshold at 77 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014 from 73 percent of the previous year.

Furthermore, the disbursement ratio, which is the actual drawdown as against the available net loan amount, improved by 12.3 percentage points to 21.6 percent in the fourth quarter from 9.3 percent during the last quarter of 2013.

The increase was due to the entry of about $2.04 billion worth of new program loans, but almost half of which was disbursed within the year.