Building roads

Last Thursday, Metro Pacific chairman Manny Pangilinan invited me to join him at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Mindanao Avenue-Valenzuela phase of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) project with PGMA as the guest of honor. The event was held in the morning so we had to leave Makati at 8 a.m. But to our pleasant surprise, it took less than 40 minutes to get to the venue for the groundbreaking which is at the boundary of Quezon City and Barangay Ugong in Valenzuela City. Those familiar with the location said the time it took us to get there is quite reasonable.

I remember it used to take almost an hour-and-a-half to get to the Veterans Memorial Hospital where we used to visit former president Joseph Estrada when he was detained there, that’s why it was much better to take the MRT. But nowadays, because a lot of tributary roads have been built over the past three years, the traffic has considerably eased.

In spite of the global crisis, the Metro Pacific Group continues to be aggressive in its investments. Some of these investments seemed risky, but in the end, Manny’s group always managed to turn in a profit. In fact, First Pacific partner Anthony Salim reportedly said that he felt Manny was more of a patriot and nationalist than a businessman, because many of his investments seemed to veer towards the development of the Philippines. But MVP proved him wrong time and again, especially when he turned a debt-saddled PLDT into the country’s most profitable company, and took on many other projects which undoubtedly contributed in the economic development of the Philippines but at the same time were also profitable.

Manny certainly puts his money where his mouth is. The ambitious NLEX project costs more than P38 billion and the Metro Pacific Group is one of the very few that has the resources to carry out a project of this magnitude. Aside from boosting government’s infrastructure program, the five-year project is expected to generate 107,000 more jobs in addition to the 880 employees of the corporation. Of course, the road project will decongest Metro Manila aside from the fact that it will cut down travel time all the way to Alabang especially with the SLEX-NLEX connector road from Caloocan to Buendia and the Skyway stage 2 component from Bicutan to Alabang.

Road projects require billions of dollars to undertake, and government should really allow the private sector to participate. Australian Ambassador Rod Smith who was also at the groundbreaking ceremony agrees that allowing private sector participation is a practical decision. Ambassador Smith just recently inked an agreement with DILG Secretary Ronnie Puno for a A$100 million 5-year provincial road management facility project covering 10 provinces in Visayas and Mindanao, which is expected to boost the local economy by improving road networks. According to the Ambassador, an estimated four million Filipinos will have better access to rehabilitated and maintained road networks, public infrastructure and other services that will improve livelihood by 2014 at the conclusion of the project.

In Nueva Vizcaya for instance, vegetable growers welcomed the proposed concrete paving of a mountain road since it will stimulate trade with the Cagayan Valley area. Time and again, it has been acknowledged that building farm-to-market roads and similar infrastructure will greatly improve the local economy since better roads means more investments due to improved access to the market place, plus the fact that it can facilitate the delivery of health, education and other basic social services to the people particularly those in the rural areas. Aside from generating employment for local residents, these infrastructure projects are expected to attract local and foreign investors particularly from the tourism sector.

The country’s growing population necessitates more roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other facilities that would stimulate and sustain growth and development. To the credit of GMA and her economic policies, the country’s economic growth under her term is acknowledged — and confirmed by foreign analysts — to be the highest at an average of 5 percent from 2001 to 2008, compared to the previous administrations of Cory Aquino (which averaged 3.8 percent), FVR (3.7 percent) and Joseph Estrada (2.8 percent). In fact, the economy grew at its fastest in 2007 when GDP growth exceeded 7 percent — acknowledged at the time to be the best in 30 years.

While the Philippines will not be able to achieve its target growth of 4 to 5 percent this year and will be at a much lower rate of 2.5 percent according to a report by the Asian Development Bank, a little growth is still better than negative or no growth at all. Besides, when you’re down, there’s no way but up, with forecasts that the economy will slightly recover to 3.5 percent in 2010.

Orders have been given for the completion of the P56-billion “super regions” project which hopefully will be completed before the end of GMA’s term in 2010 because enhanced infrastructure is the only way to attain economic development. Economic policies that encourage the participation of the private sector should be expanded because it will be impossible to achieve such grand plans as the “super regions” without the participation of corporations like the Metro Pacific Group.

Building better roads and bridges can bring about development in rural areas and help decongest big cities in Metro Manila since the population keeps growing at 1.7 million a year with more people migrating to the cities to find work. The only way the Philippines can accelerate the elevation of its status into a developed country is by building more infrastructure projects complemented by private sector participation to bring the country on the road to greater economic prosperity for more Filipinos.

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