Inclusion of PPP in blueprint questioned

A NON-GOVERNMENT organization on Friday questioned the Aquino administration’s inclusion of its public-private partnership (PPP) program in the country’s economic blueprint for the next six years.

In a statement, Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) said the inclusion of PPP in a number of sections in the draft Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) for 2011-2016, is “disturbing.”

“Such recognition has no place in a government blueprint which is supposed to assume that it is government’s role and responsibility to spur development. We in FDC see this as an abdication, the surrender of state’s role and mandate to mega-corporations who will be involved in the PPP program,” Ric Reyes, FDC president said.

Reyes said the country’s experience with PPP is “not a good one.”

“True, infrastructure development is suffering in the Philippines due to a lack of fiscal space. But we should be treating not the symptoms but the problem – which is the fact that we are paying a post-Edsa I average of 38.6 percent of our national government spending for debt service. Had payments for debt been channeled to more productive expenditures – which includes infrastructure – then we wouldn’t have this predicament,” Reyes said.

“Our neighbors in the Asean have been spending directly in infrastructure so as to create a good economic environment for investments to come in. In the Philippines, we are even relying on private investments to develop our infrastructure because debt service siphons our public coffers,” he added.

He said the best way to resolve the country’s infrastructure problem is to adderss the debt overhang.

“PPP as a solution only serves to worsen both. It is a cure worse than the disease,” he said.

FDC said President Aquino’s guarantee that PPP project proponents would secure their investment returns is costly for the government.

“Ironically, the more vigilant regulation or legislative oversight is to future anomalous PPPs, the graver the financial burden will be,” the group said.

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) had said that the PPP initiative would accelerate the rate of infrastructure spending to economic output.

In November, the Aquino administration presented a list of priority PPP projects that are ready for bidding in the first half of this year.

The NEDA estimated that the PPP initiative would require up to P739.78 billion in investments in the next six years. –DARWIN G. AMOJELAR SENIOR REPORTER, Manila times