Gov’t accelerating infrastructure program: Abella

May 11, 2017

The Duterte administration has been engaged in aggressive infrastructure program amid a United Nations report the Philippines' access to infrastructure has been lagging behind its neighbors, Malacanang said on Thursday. Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said the government acknowledges the Asia-Pacific Countries with Special Needs Report 2017 of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) showing that the Philippines ranked 24th out of 41 Asia and the Pacific countries in terms of access to infrastructure. "We recognize the infrastructure backlog left by previous governments, thus, at the beginning of the term of the President, the Duterte administration’s economic managers have already vowed to accelerate infrastructure investments," he said in a statement. "Ten months after, we now have an aggressive infrastructure program, which we call Build Build Build, which aims to construct a network of roads, bridges, railways and airports to spur economic growth and lower poverty," Abella added. According to the ESCAP report, the Philippines scored 0.336 in the Access for Physical Infrastructure Index (APII) for 2015. Comparing with its Southeast Asian peers, the Philippines got a higher score compred with Indonesia’s 0.278, Lao People’s Democratic Republic’s 0.225, Myanmar’s 0.198, and Cambodia’s 0.186. But it lagged behind Thailand’s 0.418, Vietnam’s 0.419, Malaysia’s 0.502, and Singapore’s 0.708. Brunei was not part of the report. Japan was the top performing on APII. The 41 Asia Pacific countries included in the report were ranked based on the availability, quality and type of physical infrastructure investments covering transport, energy, information and communications technology, and water supply and sanitation. The report said APII is used to analyze the multidimensional character of infrastructure and illustrate the strong positive relationship between infrastructure and the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development in the countries. (Celerina Monte/DMS)