If only this was the one highlighted
Lost in the controversy over President Rodrigo Duterte kissing a married overseas Filipino worker during his recent visit to South Korea was the signing of the loan amounting to $173 million for the construction of the Cebu International Container Port in Tayud, Consolacion.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Export-Import Bank of Korea president and chairman Sun Soo-Eun signed the loan agreement with President Duterte and South Korean President Moon Jae-in as witnesses.
The estimated cost of the project is P10.1 billion (or almost $200 million), which means that the Philippine Government will provide part of the funding.
The Cebu port project is part of the ambitious Build, Build, Build program of the Duterte administration. According to the Department of Finance (DOF), the port, which will be built in a 25-hectare reclaimed land in Tayud, will include a berthing facility, operating facility and structure for containers, like a freight station and an inspection shed, together with an access road and bridge and a dredged waterway and turning basin.
The site of the present Cebu International Container Port (CIP) in Cebu City would be vacated once construction of the international port in Consolacion is completed. The old CIP site in the port area in Cebu City will then be transformed, according to Cebu Port Authority (CPA) general manager Angelo Verdan earlier, into a business and cruise hub.
Verdan had cited the advantage of having the international container port in Consolacion town, the most obvious being the easing of traffic at least on the route currently used by 10-wheeler trucks and prime movers from Cebu City to the Mactan Economic Zone. Those trucks would already be following the Consolacion-Mactan route.
But this also means that the Department of Public Works and Highways will have to take care of the peripherals, like the proposed 300-meter four-lane bridge that would connect the new container port to Cebu mainland.
With a new international container port, the hope is that the flow of goods in the Visayas and in Cebu would be further enhanced. If only this was the one that got highlighted in that Korean trip.