PH, ADB sign first $4.3-b loan package for South rail

THE Philippines and the Asian Development Bank have signed the first tranche of the multilateral institution’s US$4.3-billion (approximately P223.6 billion) funding support for the South Commuter Railway Project, one of the Duterte administration’s big-ticket infrastructure projects under the “Build, Build, Build” program.

The Department of Finance said in a statement Friday it was ADB’s largest single infrastructure loan package to date. President Rodrigo Duterte witnessed the signing of the agreement by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III and ADB president Masatsugu Asakawa on the first tranche of the loan amounting to US$1.75 billion in ceremonies held at Malacañan Palace Thursday night (June 16).

Dominguez said ADB’s high level of approved financing to the Philippines—totaling over US$30 billion since 1969 and of which more than half was released under the Duterte administration—was “a vote of confidence for President Duterte’s economic development agenda and fiscal management.”

Other ADB-supported projects in the country have attracted total of US$8.7 billion in co-financing from several partner institutions, or about 74 percent of the total sovereign co-funding from 1972 to 2022.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency, which has extended US$4.5 billion to ADB’s projects in the Philippines since 2017, has been the largest of these co-financing partners.

Under the Duterte administration, the Philippines-ADB portfolio has also been rebalanced to closely align with the priorities set by the Philippine government, such as the “Build, Build, Build” program and the ambitious climate action agenda, which led the bank to extend its first-ever climate change policy-based loan to the country.

ADB has provided technical assistance to the government for the design of several projects.