Flagship infra projects

Administration after administration has been publicly ambitious about infrastructure projects.

- BOO CHANCO

But in the end, they all fail to deliver on their big promises.I remember Ben Diokno speaking before the Foundation for Economic Freedom during the early months of the Duterte administration. He announced Build, Build, Build. I think he coined it on the spot as he tried to convince a skeptical audience that this time, it would be different. It wasn’t.

As Budget secretary then, Diokno assured there would be no bottlenecks in fund releases. And he also promised GPS trackers to check the real-time status of the projects from the BBB website.

By the end of Duterte’s term in June 2022, only a fraction of “big-ticket” flagship projects had been completed...approximately 18 out of 119 flagship projects.

But DPWH under Mark Villar reported completing, at least on paper, a good number of smaller-scale projects between 2016 and 2022. The list includes 10,376 flood control structures and we all know better what flood control projects mean.

Under BBM, the Duterte-era Build, Build, Build became the Build Better More (BBM) program. There are 209 Infrastructure Flagship Projects (IFPs) under BBM with a total investment of approximately P10.6 trillion.

Of the 209 IFPs currently under the BBM program, the vast majority were initiated, planned or started before the current administration took office.

The bulk (70 percent) of the 209 projects are “carryovers” from the Duterte administration's “Build, Build, Build” program. Some even date back to the Aquino III administration’s Public Private Partnership pipeline.