Let’s not keep Phl waiting

To address the present sorry state of the country’s infrastructure, the Duterte administration plans to increase infrastructure spending to up to seven percent of gross domestic product.

Media reports quote Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno as saying that the Philippine economy is deficient in all types of infrastructure, whether it be highways, bridges, ports, or airports.

He said the government would address the problem of underspending on public goods and services that prevailed during the past two years.

In 2010, the Aquino government spent only percent of GDP for infrastructure. This rose to 2.5 percent in 2013, and to 3.3 percent in 2015.

Part of President Duterte’s socio-economic agenda is to increase funds for infrastructure to speed up implementation of projects under the public-private partnership (PPP) program, including those that would help solve the worsening traffic problem especially in Metro Manila.

According to Diokno, they plan to increase infrastructure spending by nearly half in 2017 or about P891 billion to create more jobs and boost the economy and to fast-track infrastructure development to pump-prime the economy by pushing for 24/7 construction work for all major Metro Manila projects.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III had said recently that the public ended up absorbing the costs of unbuilt vital infrastructure, which can be seen from our congested roads and the Metro traffic mess, our poorly maintained ports and crowded airports.

One of the big-ticket infrastructure projects that will finally be given the priority it deserves is the North Luzon Expressway-South Luzon Expressway (NLEX-SLEX) Connector Road.

From two hours, travel time from NLEX to SLEX would be reduced to only 15 to 20 minutes. It is estimated that travelling from Clark, Pampanga to Calamba, Laguna would take about 1 hour and 40 minutes.

I remember one time when it took me four hours to get to Quezon City from Calamba. To get to Skyway took only an hour. More than two hours was spent travelling from Magallanes to Guadalupe in Makati.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and NEDA director general Ernesto Pernia has said the connector road project is among the 17 stalled PPP initiatives that would be rolled out between now and end of 2017 or even earlier.

For his part, Public Works Secretary Mark Villar said the connector road is one project the DPWH would implement to solve Metro Manila’s traffic crisis and that unlike in the previous administration, no delays are expected in completing the project.

The connector road project started out as an unsolicited project offered by the Metro Pacific Tollways Development Corp. (MPTDC), a unit of Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC), in 2010. It was approved by the NEDA board in 2013 under the PPP program.

It consists of an elevated four-lane, eight-kilometer toll expressway starting at NLEX Segment 10 at C-3 or Fifth Avenue in Caloocan City and connecting to the SLEX through Stage 3 of the Metro Manila Skyway System Project (Skyway 3) in Manila. The project will have at least two interchanges and two toll plazas.

The project suffered from several delays caused by government, but the good news is, MPDTC finally bagged the project via the Swiss Challenge route after no other bidder exceeded or at least matched its offer to build the connector road for P23.2 billion (inclusive of right-of-way costs). The road itself would cost P15.7 billion to build.

Villar said DPWH is doing “due diligence” on the project so he cannot commit to a specific date on when it would begin. But the DPWH secretary has already announced that the connector road was one of the projects worth over P20 billion that the agency would implement to help solve Metro Manila’s traffic problem.

DPWH has yet to issue a Notice to Proceed (NTP) to MPTDC to start construction. Any delays in implementing the project could result in the firm missing out on its 2022 completion target date.

MPTC president Rodrigo Franco remains optimistic that civil works on the project could start in 2018 and the entire road completed in three to four years or before President Duterte’s term ends in 2022.

Assuming MPTC gets the notice of the award before the end of August, then the group can proceed with the detailed design until the end of the year. Right-of-way acquisition would take around 30 months, but Franco said they expect the first section to be available in 2018, allowing construction to start by that time.

The government can no longer afford any delays. A Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) study has revealed that Metro Manila’s traffic congestion, if unabated, would cost the country P6 billion a day or P2.19 trillion annually in productivity losses.

John Forbes, senior advisor of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, has warned that if roads and other infrastructure are not upgraded immediately, the traffic mess in Metro Manila would likely worsen to untolerable levels and the metropolis would be at risk of becoming uninhabitable as annual new car growth increases to 500,000 by 2020.

Forbes said that while roads are being improved throughout the country, the National Capital Region urgently needs more limited access roads, especially skyways and rail.

The huge multiplier effect on the economy of this one project is beyond question. Those who have suffered traffic at EDSA and C-5 for a long time now finally have something to look forward to. It would be a mortal sin for our government to keep them waiting.

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