Next president to inherit 88 infra projects on 'advanced stage'

MANILA, Philippines — Whoever wins the presidential election in May is set to inherit 88 infrastructure projects that are already on “advanced stage” under President Rodrigo Duterte’s flagship “Build, Build, Build” program.

"The next administration will have a lot of infrastructure projects in its hands,” Emil Sadain, chief implementer of the infrastructure program, told journalists on Wednesday after the final inter-agency review of projects under the Duterte administration.

“We’re ready for transition of big ticket projects," added Sadain, who is also an undersecretary at the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Philippine history has shown that a newly elected president has always delayed — if not outright abandoned — pet projects pursued by predecessors. So far, most presidential candidates have said they would continue Duterte’s infrastructure program, but with changes.

READ: Was Build, Build, Build successful? Presidential bets weigh in

"The most challenging is the right of way acquisition because most are in urban centers. Documentation has to be thorough," Sadain said. 

Broken down, 60 of the 88 projects that will be passed on to the next administration consist of hard infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, airports, seaports, dams and railways.

The rest are flood control projects while some are not even defined as public works such as the national ID system. There are also projects that were only continued from previous administrations like the Aquino-era LRT-1 Cavite extension.

A total of 35 out of 88 projects are under construction already and are set for completion by 2023. There are also 20 projects that are yet to be reviewed.

In 2017, the Duterte administration started with a list of 75 flagship infrastructure projects. That original list was revised twice in 2020 – expanding the number of projects to 104 and then to 112 while those projects that were no longer considered feasible because of the pandemic were dropped.

READ: Government 'shelves' 8 flagship projects far from construction phase

According to Sadain, a total of 12 projects have so far been finished by the Duterte administration, two of them – the LRT 2 East Extension and the Metro Manila Skyway Stage 3 — were started under the previous administration. By the end of the year, he said 19 projects would be completed.

In a commentary, Miguel Chanco, chief emerging Asia economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Duterte’s infrastructure program “will be hard to sustain” as his successor might have to rein in spending to trim the country's debts.

Chanco added that the outgoing president “failed to meet its lofty target”. He said spending has risen to about 4.5% of GDP as of 2021, from the roughly 3% level at the end of the term of the late ex-President Benigno Aquino, but “it's still miles from the 7% target to be reached this year”.

“Accordingly, the mere exit from this crisis period alone is unlikely to be enough for the next government to pick up where Mr. Duterte left off, despite the near-unanimous pledges to do so from the slate of presidential hopefuls, albeit in varying degrees,” Chanco said.