United Kingdom unlocks P370 billion credit facility for Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — The United Kingdom is channeling £5 billion (about P370 billion) in credit financing to fuel British firms’ export ventures and expand their presence in the Philippine market.

“The UK Export Finance has £5 billion available to support British exports to the Philippines. It can do that in a variety of ways,” UK Ambassador Laure Beaufils told reporters last week.

The UKEF, the credit agency of the UK government, can enable loans, credit guarantees and other concessional financing to boost British companies’ partnerships with Filipino businesses, she noted.

“That money is, in truth, significantly underutilized. We really want to make a lot better use of it. It’s not specific to renewable energy (RE), but there’s so much happening in this space that we really hope to see more take-up of that,” Beaufils said.

Last Friday, the ambassador visited the 72-megawatt-peak solar farm of tycoon Edgar Saavedra’s Citicore Renewable Energy Corp. (CREC) in Tuy, Batangas, set to be energized before the end of this year.

The UK government, through its flagship Mobilist program, invested $12.5 million (about P715 million) in the initial public offering (IPO) of CREC in June.

CREC, the second-largest solar producer in the Philippines, is the country’s second public listing this year following the P6-billion IPO of Didipio gold-copper mine operator OceanaGold Philippines Inc.

According to Beaufils, these investments to support local businesses demonstrated the UK government’s “trust, commitment and confidence” in the country’s shift to clean energy.

Under the Philippine Energy Plan, the government wants to achieve a 35 percent RE share by 2030, 50 percent by 2040 and over 50 percent by 2050.

“We are clearly backing that and doubling down on that through our investments and through our engagements. And we will continue to do that,” she said.

Beaufils is also confident that Filipinos can see more robust support from the UK in the years to come “now that the building blocks are in place.”

“It’s because we don’t have the same historical relationship as perhaps Japan and the US had. So we’ve had to play catch-up a little bit. But I think now we’ve caught up. So we’re here to stay, and we’re certainly growing,” she added.