Can’t fail if all you do is plan

ABOUT two weeks ago, and with an appropriate amount of bureaucratic fanfare, the Philippines and the US Trade Development Agency (USTDA) signed an agreement for a $683,000 (P32.95 million) technical assistance (TA) grant offered by the latter for the development of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) plan for Metro Cebu. All concerned, as well as the meager amount of media attention given to the matter, hailed this as some sort of breakthrough, but I’m not sure why.

According to the official statement from the Department of Finance (DoF), “USTDA’s technical aid for the project, which aims to examine the technical, financial, environmental, and other critical aspects of the proposed implementation of an ITS in Metro Cebu, will identify the physical improvements and equipment required to enhance the logistical backbone in the area.”

The TA is scheduled to run until December 2022, with the DoF adding that it will complement the

ROUGH TRADE

Department of Transportation’s (DoTr) Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, which is currently in progress and is being financed by the World Bank and the Agence Francaise de Développement (AFD).

USTDA Acting Director Enoh Ebong, who signed the TA agreement on behalf of the US government, said, “The solutions to be assessed under this grant will not only relieve traffic congestion but also reduce vehicle emissions and energy consumption, underscoring USTDA’s commitment to supporting climate-smart transportation infrastructure.”

The first question that comes to mind is, how many grand-scale transportation plans does the metTHE

ropolitan Cebu area need, exactly? The anticipated outcome of the USTDA TA will be at least the fourth in the past 10 years. The old Department of Transportation and Communications commissioned one (mostly from private consultants) back in 2011. That was updated in 2015 with the help of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the main revision being the inclusion of port development, and the work was further refined in the 2018-2020 “Urban Transport Master Plan” presented by JICA.

That plan is basically the blueprint for what is being done in Cebu now, including the BRT and the Cebu-Cordova Link Bridge, both under construction; the new Cebu International Container Terminal, which just had its groundbreaking in February; the Mandaue Coastal Road and 4th Cebu-Mactan Bridge project, which has gotten as far as a feasibility study; the Metro Cebu Circumferential Road, parts of which are already being built; two metro rail transit lines; and an Area Traffic Control System, which at this point is mostly still just a good idea, although a system of about 18 synchronized traffic lights working on an Australian system was installed in Cebu City.

With all of that already happening the obvious question is, where does the USTDA fit into the bigger picture? The most obvious answer to that question is, it doesn’t, at least not in practical terms.

The USTDA’s mission – as its name suggests – is to support trade and investment opportunities for US business overseas, and one way to do that is to assist with development in places where US companies might do business. Having been largely handcuffed for the last several years by the idiotically fascist trade policy of the former US administration, the USTDA has gotten aggressive under US President Joe Biden, and is wading into the pond inhabited by the world’s well-established multilateral development banks and official development assistance agencies with both feet. For instance, the USTDA has already announced it will establish an office within the US embassy here, as well as in a few other countries, before the end of this year.

Thus, the USTDA TA is largely marketing, from its point of view, “getting its name out there” to potential customers, so to speak. The TA agreement is largely marketing for the Duterte administration as well, but of a more political nature. Even before the pandemic, economic reality and bureaucratic inertia had slowed the momentum of the administration’s Build, Build, Build aspirations, and the pandemic of course slowed things even more. Even though the government has kept things moving remarkably well under the circumstances, it still does seem to be keenly aware that it will end its time in office having accomplished far less than it intended, so it understandably makes the most of any news that looks like progress, even if it is a rather vacuous one like a TA grant from an agency that’s late to the development party.

Even so, there would not appear to be too many downsides to the assistance provided by the USTDA. It is a grant, after all, and continuing assessment of development ideas and plans is not in general a bad thing.

However, it is not without its potential pitfalls. It has been the history of this country when it comes to big schemes – the “roadmaps” that everyone seems to be so fond of – to expend most of its energy on planning, and very little on follow-through. It’s not that nothing gets done, at least some always is, but in piecemeal fashion; and the most likely product of any “roadmap” or anything with the word “system” in the title will be another roadmap. The USTDA TA grant and the work it proposes tends to play into that pattern, especially a year before a change in administration will bring the inevitable creation of a bunch of new plans.

More specific to the USTDA is the factor that, in contrast to development assistance from one of the multilateral development banks, for example, assistance from the USTDA comes with at least an implied self-serving commercial motive; nothing it does for the Philippines will be purely for the Philippines’ sake. That doesn’t mean the assistance can’t have great value for the country; in most cases it probably will, but to ensure that it does, the responsible parties on this side of the table will have to remain actively aware of the real reason the relationship with the USTDA exists in the first place. The country’s present economic managers are probably up to that challenge, but whether or not that will still be the case a year hence is something to wonder about.