CLARK FREEPORT ZONE, Pampanga—Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the fast-track development of the New Clark City here is meant to transform it into the country’s next big metropolis and decongest Metro Manila’s highly populated urban centers.
Dominguez said New Clark City is envisioned to be a hub of agro-industrial activities, home to cutting-edge technology and logistics companies, and host to well-equipped backup government centers and world-class sports facilities.
“It captures what the ‘Build Build Build’ program aspires to achieve: a coherent national logistics circuit that will support our country’s rapid and inclusive development,” said Dominguez in his opening remarks at the Philippine Economic Briefing held at the ASEAN Convention Center here.
In welcoming the participants at the briefing, Dominguez described the New Clark City as the “showcase of the Duterte administration’s economic strategy.”
Alongside the development of New Clark City is the construction of railways going to Subic and to Manila and the expansion of the Clark International Airport, which will get a new world-class terminal building to accommodate a projected eight million passengers per year to help relieve the congestion at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Dominguez said. The expansion project for the Clark airport broke ground last December.
“This, truly, is where the future begins. We envision this as the hub of agro-industrial activities as well as the home for cutting-edge technology companies. Clark, in the near future, will be the growth driver for Luzon,” Dominguez said.
Joining Dominguez at the PEB to discuss the Duterte administration’s economic strategy to sustain the Philippines’ robust growth and make this inclusive are Secretaries Ernesto Pernia of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Arthur Tugade of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), Mark Villar of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr., Assistant Secretary Teresa Habitan of the Department of Finance (DOF), Director Rolando Toledo of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and Vivencio Dizon, president and CEO of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA).
President Duterte’s economic strategy, Dominguez said, aims to grow the economy by 7 percent or better into the medium term by embarking on an ambitious infrastructure program dubbed the “Build Build Build” consisting of 75 flagship projects, of which 23 have completed the approvals process and ready to begin implementation.
He said this aggressive “Build Build Build” program would not be possible without the fiscal space created by many years of disciplined management of the government’s revenues and expenditures and the implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion or TRAIN Law, which will complement existing budgetary resources to hasten the infra buildup.
Under the TRAIN, 70 percent of all incremental revenues from this law will be used to fund the infrastructure program, while 30 percent will be used to expand social services and harness the country’s human resourcesthrough education, health and skills-training programs.
“The infrastructure projects, with their high multiplier effects on the economy, will attract investments and create jobs,” Dominguez said. “The infrastructure program will stimulate rapid economic growth. By 2022, we expect to dramatically bring down poverty incidence in our economy from 21.6 percent to only 14 percent as we transform our economic development to make it more inclusive.”
Dominguez said the expanded inflow of official development assistance (ODA) from the Philippines’ allies in the region, the strong financing support from multilateral institutions such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank (WB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), as well as bonds floated to take advantage of the country’s investment-grade credit ratings has allowed the government to veer away from the traditional Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model and focus more on “hybrid” forms of financing for its high-impact projects.
“These hybrid forms of project financing will, in turn, enable us to undertake the projects quickly and reap their economic benefits early,” Dominguez said.
Under the “hybrid” PPP, the government is the one building the infrastructure projects and then, upon completion, bids out the operation and maintenance (O&M) of these facilities to the private sector. As a result, projects are bound to be finished faster and cheaper.
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