356 road projects for Roll It

A total of 356 road projects with an estimated cost of P6.83 billion will be undertaken next year under the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Convergence Program, the Board of Investments (BOI) said.

In a recent update to the Export Development Council-Networking Committee on Transport and Logistics, the BOI said for 2019, construction and improvement of the 356 access roads leading to industries and economic zones are broken down into 179 new projects and 177 ongoing projects.

The budget for new projects is P2.56 billion while for the ongoing infrastructure works is P3.36 billion, with the balance going to the capital expenditures (capex) of the central office.

Called Roll It (Roads Leveraging Linkages of Industry and Trade), the DTI-DPWH Convergence program aims to “facilitate the efficient and more coordinated efforts between the two departments to identify, prioritize, and implement road access infrastructure leading to various industries and economic zones in a technically correct and politically participative process,” said the BOI.

Broken down by region, the top five areas with the most Roll It projects are the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) with an aggregate 63 projects (24 new ones and 39 ongoing), Region 2 with 54 projects (43 new and 11 ongoing), Region 9 with 44 (30 new and 14 ongoing), Region 7 with 38 (18 new and 20 ongoing), and Region 13 with 24 (20 new and four ongoing).

Meanwhile, the biggest budget allocation will go to Region 11 at P848.25 million to fund 44 projects, while the smallest outlay is meant for Region 3 at P110 million to finance eight all-new projects.

Roll It was launched this year following a series of national meetings, quarterly consultations, and site inspections in 2017.

For 2018, a total of 229 road projects with a total length of more than 502 kilometers are currently under construction. Of these, 177 projects are ongoing and 52 have been completed.

The highest number of projects are for CAR with 41 (40 ongoing and one completed), followed by Region 7 with 27 (20 ongoing and seven completed), Region 12 with 20 (16 completed and four ongoing), Region 6 and Region 11 both with 19 each (15 ongoing and four completed for Region 6 and 14 ongoing and five completed for Region 11), and Region 9 with 17 (13 completed and four ongoing).