L AUGUST 9

the process. The controversial leader says he plans a $180 billion “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure campaign in his six-year term.

Duterte has already approved the auction of 21 projects worth $16 billion, including the overhaul of Manila’s shabby airport and a railway line on Mindanao island in the south. Other projects include upgrading ports, roads, rail links and irrigation.

Despite security problems linked to the spread of Islamic State militancy on Mindanao and Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, investors have welcomed the commitments, but say they need to see progress on the ground.

“We see a high degree of commitment and seriousness in the executive branch and probability of sufficient financing... not for every project to be completed on schedule but for very substantial and significant progress,” said John Forbes, senior adviser at the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines.

“However, the capacity of the bureaucracy to process a huge volume of projects... (is) untested,” he added. “The Philippines is not China, where bulldozers rumble through neighbourhoods at the government’s command.” WORST-PERFORMING CURRENCY To meet existing and anticipated pick-up in demand, imports of capital goods, mainly infrastructure-related, have risen more than 7 per cent in the first five months of the year from the same period of 2016 to $12.1 billion. For the first time in 15 years, the Philippines is expecting its 2017 current account balance to be in a deficit of $600 million.

The peso is Asia’s worst performing currency this year, hitting lows close to 51 per dollar last month. At the market close in Manila on Friday, the peso traded 50.16 to

— Reuters — Reuters Workers walk over the newly dried concrete and secure linking steel bars of the 5.58 kilometre elevated highway in Caloocan City, metro Manila. Workers lay out steel bars in constructing the 8-kilometre 4-lane elevated highway along Buendia avenue in...