Getting dream projects done

A big explanation why we are such a mess today is our government's usual inability to execute good plans.

- BOO CHANCO

And in the rare times we have successfully implemented a good idea, the next administration stops it because credit for success accrues to the previous administration.

In reaction to our column last Wednesday on using PPP for building schoolhouses, Louie Ferrer of Megawide told me that his company alone built 10,000 classrooms over two years. The scheme was Built Lease Transfer (after 10 years) under PNoy. The 10th year ended in October 2024. Private banks loved the project and have been asking them and DepEd to bring the scheme back. But Duterte stopped it. Sayang. It enabled the government to allocate what would have gone to school building funds to other programs including, sadly, congressional pork.

We do not need new plans. We only have to implement the plans already gathering dust in some bureaucrat's cabinet. Or continue doing more of the rare successful projects like what Megawide did.

When I was taking graduate courses in economics at the then Center for Research and Communication, a speaker in one of my classes related the story of how a group of Filipinos on a trade mission to Thailand met with the Thai counterparts of our Board of Investment officials. Thailand was a hot destination for car manufacturers, among others and so the Pinoys asked the Thais what was the secret of their success.

The Thais reportedly answered that they studied our Investment Incentives program and did one thing we didn't do: implement the good ideas.