NEDA: Loan disbursements improve in Q2

MANILA, Philippines - The financial performance of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) loans during the second quarter of the year indicate favorable management of resources, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said on Tuesday.

Total ODA loans portfolio amounted to $9.79 billion in June. This consists of 11 program loans worth $3.63 billion and 53 project loans worth $6.16 billion.

The NEDA Monitoring and Evaluation Staff said that absorptive capacity indicators such as disbursement level, availment rate and disbursement ratio improved in the second quarter of 2015 compared to the same period last year.

An increase in the disbursement level was recorded from $1.09 billion in the second quarter of 2014 to $1.51 billion this year.

According to the NEDA, this increase was due to the 287-percent increase in the disbursement of loans from the World Bank which jumped from $204.26 million to $789.80 million this year. Disbursement is the actual amount of ODA loans during the year.

Meanwhile, the availment rate or the cumulative actual disbursements increased from 80 percent in second quarter of 2014 to 84 percent in the similar period this year.

The NEDA said that the disbursement ratio also improved from 15 percent last year to 22 percent in the same period. This was due to the program loans that disbursed more than half of the available balance in the period.

The disbursement rate, the amount of actual disbursements made during the year, suffered a drop from 107 percent in 2014 to 89 percent in the second quarter this year but remains above the 70-percent threshold.

Data from ODA showed that the World Bank was the largest source of loans for the second quarter of 2015 with $3.44 billion or 35 percent. The Japan International Cooperation Agency is the second with $3.13 billion (32 percent) followed by the Asian Development Bank with $2.58 billion (26 percent).

The infrastructure sector has the largest share of loans with $3.79 billion for 32 loans (39 percent), followed by the Social Reform and Community Development with $2.4 billion for 9 loans (25 percent) and the Governance and Institution Development with $2.06 billion for five loans (21 percent).

The NEDA is mandated by the Republic Act 8182 or the ODA Act of 1996 to conduct an annual review of all projects financed by the ODA.