ONGOING infrastructure projects will be expedited while new approvals will slow as the government recalibrates its public investment program amid a looming loss of access to concessional loans.
“We’re going to slow down on approvals of new infrastructure projects but expedite spending on ongoing projects,” Socioeconomic Planning Undersecretary Joseph Capuno told reporters on Monday.
The strategy is designed to maximize the use of official development assistance, access to which is expected to be lost over three years after the country won an upgrade to upper-middle-income status.
The recalibration, Capuno said, should not be interpreted as an infrastructure spending slowdown.
“Just to be clear, we’re not going to slow down on all infrastructure projects, only on new [ones], but expedite on [those] ongoing,” he said.
Capuno added that constrained fiscal resources were prompting the government to carefully prioritize projects requiring state financing.
“Admittedly, there is very limited fiscal space for next year. We need that to fund the government counterpart for the infrastructure and other investments,” he said.
While approvals for new infrastructure projects will temporarily slow, Capuno said ongoing ones would continue to receive support and even be implemented at a faster pace.
“If you remember, during the first half and towards the end of last year, we slowed down spending on ongoing infrastructure projects, not on new. Now, we’re going to slow down a bit on new but expedite spending on ongoing projects,” he said.
Continuing ongoing projects is critical because these already require committed counterpart funding and are at more advanced stages of implementation, Capuno continued.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, meanwhile, said the funding transition would not happen immediately.
“I think in the next three years we [will] still maintain those concessional loans. But gradually, as we progress, we will lose eventually those ones,” he said.
The government is thus moving to approve as many priority projects as possible and Capuno said it had a number of infrastructure and social sector investment projects in the pipeline to 2028.
“So the strategy is actually to approve debt, all those in the pipeline, before the three-year window closes,” he said.
“I don’t have the [project] numbers now, but easily 20, 30-plus,” Capuno continued, referring to those supported by development partners including the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency and other bilateral and multilateral lenders.
He said the government had already undertaken a recalibration exercise to firm up investments that could be implemented during the remainder of the Marcos administration’s term.