When it came into office in July 2016, the administration of Rodrigo Duterte announced that it would pursue an infrastructure program consisting of 75 major projects—dubbed the Build Build Build program—and that most of the projects would be completed before June 30, 2022, when President Duterte’s term ends. Chief among the projects are projects in the field of transportation—railways, bridges and airports.
The bigger the project, the longer the period needed for its preparation and implementation. Given the fact that the Duterte administration has just completed two years in office—one third of the President’s term—it can be said that the time window for the Build Build Build program has significantly narrowed. I know whereof I speak because I once worked for two institutions—one international and one domestic—whose missions were/are to finance development projects.
There are three phases in the prosecution of development projects that are intended to be entirely or partially financed externally. The first phase is the preparation of the project. Project preparation extends from the conceptualization of a project—e.g., the decision to lay down the initial line of a subway system—to the project’s being brought to the point where it is ready for financial evaluation. This phase will involve putting together the various components—economics, technical, legal and administrative—of a project into a package that will merit financial approval. The preparation phase of a development project can be as short or as long as the government wants it to be; insufficiency of political will and bureaucratic inertia can make the preparation phase very long.
Many of the Duterte administration’s infrastructure projects have been in the pipeline for a long time, their preparation having spanned two or more administrations. Some officials of the selected financing institutions—these usually are the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and ODA (official development assistance) givers such as Jica (Japan International Cooperation Agency)—have been heard to say privately that some Philippine government project proposals presented to them are less than 100-percent ready for evaluation.
The second phase in the prosecution of development projects is the evaluation of the projects by prospective financiers. In this phase, the projects’ claimed feasibilities—economic, technical and legal—are subjected to an examination intended to establish whether the project is viable and will be capable of generating the expected economic and social benefits. If the examination yields negative results, the prospective donor institutions or governments will ask the Philippine government—through the Neda (National Economic and Development Authority)—to review the projects and make the needed project-proposal revisions. If the government has done a good job of preparing the projects for financier evaluation, this phase of the prosecution of development projects can be expeditious and smooth.
Needless to say, the construction of the projects is the longest and most difficult phase of the prosecution of development projects. Delays in the release of funds, acquisitions of rights of way, technical glitches, cost overruns and, let us not forget, natural disturbances, can combine to delay and derail even the most well-planned projects.
Although Mr. Duterte has four years left in his term, abundant experience has shown that the last year of a Philippine president’s term is a highly politicized time, with the attention of the nation’s political leaders focused on the upcoming elections. There is the added fact that a Philippine Chief Executive is usually a lame duck in his last year in office.
Thus, with two of his six years in office zone, and with the sixth year given over to highly partisan political activity—especially if the voters in the 2019 elections packs the Senate with oppositionists—the Duterte administration has, realistically speaking, only three years with which to put in place all the railways, airports, bridges and other big-ticket infrastructure items that it flamboyantly announced for completion during the period up to June 30, 2022. The time window is steadily narrowing.
The high probability is that most of the Build Build Build projects will not be inaugurated by President Rodrigo Duterte; they will be inaugurated by his successor. Too bad for an infrastructure-deficient Philippines. Worse for Mr. Duterte.