USAID exec to arrive in Manila

MANILA, Philippines - An official from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will be in Manila for a four-day visit beginning tomorrow to help launch several new development projects in cooperation with Philippine partners, the US embassy in Manila announced yesterday.

The embassy said Eric Postel, assistant administrator for USAID’s Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and Environment, will visit the country from Nov. 5-8.

Postel will meet with high-level government officials, business chambers, and other stakeholders to discuss the US-Philippines Partnership for Growth (PFG) initiative launched in November 2011 by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario.

The PFG provides a new framework for deepening and strengthening bilateral engagement to promote broad-based and inclusive economic growth. The program is intended to mobilize the resources of both countries to address the most serious constraints to economic growth in the Philippines.

Postel will launch a new partnership between USAID and Valenzuela City that will implement the use of mobile money in the city’s financial transactions under the Scaling Innovations in Mobile Money Project.

The project will help cut administrative costs, increase transparency, reduce potential leakage, and make transacting with government easier for citizens.

These objectives also support USAID Forward, an initiative which focuses on innovation and the application of technology to achieve high-impact development.

Together with Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, Postel will also participate in the launching of the USAID-supported Judicial Strengthening for Court Effectiveness Project that seeks to improve the efficiency of Philippine courts.