How shall flagship infra projects be funded?

This administration is becoming famous for promising too much without specifying how the promises shall be implemented. From rice costing only ?20/kilo to billions of dollars in foreign investments supposedly procured whenever the president goes on foreign trips, and now these so-called 194 mega projects promised again to leapfrog the economic development of the country. Where shall the government get the funding?

The NEDA board, headed by the president himself, and Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the estimated total cost of all these projects is ?9 trillion. The country already has a ?13.7 trillion national debt. Is the government going to incur an additional ?9 trillion to make the total debt ?22.7 trillion, not counting the annually-compounded interests? These enormous projects include the North Long-Haul Railway, the Ilocos Sur Trans Basin Project, the Panay Railway Project, the Mindanao Railway Project 3, the San Mateo Railway, the UP PGH Diliman Project, the NAIA Airport Rehab Project and, of course, the Metro Cebu Expressway. Where shall the government get the money?

This government has decided to continue 71 unfinished projects of the Duterte administration. While “Build, build, build” was the slogan of the Duterte administration, this current administration adopted BBM or “Build Better and More”. The president was reported to have said that most of the mega projects are designed to solve traffic congestion. This is good politics, of course. Shades of BBM’s father's infra projects and his mom's so-called edifice complex. But do these big-ticket projects take precedence to food security, natural disaster preparedness, public health, national defense, poverty, homelessness, joblessness, and education?

The president calls these mega projects the government's flagship initiatives to address the confluence of the country's problems. And NEDA's Arsenio Balisacan has claimed these projects shall be financed by various development partners or Official Development Assistance, general appropriations, or public-private partnerships. Balisacan used economic jargon ordinary citizens cannot comprehend. In order to simplify our terms, NEDA is saying the government doesn’t have enough money to fund all the outlandish ambitions of politicians. Thus, the Philippines has to borrow and to beg from external sources of assistance and use a portion of the annual budget to finance these grandiose projects.

Thus, the funding shall come from massive external and internal borrowing. The government is going to borrow once more, over and over again. These public officials are totally unmindful that the ?13.7 trillion cannot be fully amortized in the next 10 years and thus way, way beyond the terms of both the immediately preceding president and the incumbent. We are going to burden for the nth time future generations of our grandchildren and great- grandchildren to pay the debts of our ambitious politicians. In fairness to the current administration, it has become the habit of Philippine presidents to leave unpaid debts to their respective successors. It was only president PNoy who achieved the record of lowering the national debt during his watch. Don't take my word for it, check these out.

All the rest of the presidents, most especially GMA, caused the ballooning of national debt. The biggest debts were incurred during the time of President Duterte as well as the time of Marcos Sr., followed by GMA. Duterte could always invoke the COVID-19 pandemic as the culprit, and the Cory defenders could always claim that her government had to install many corrective mechanisms to heal the nation and revive democratic institutions devastated by Marcos Sr. The loyalists, however, could show many long-term and strategic infra initiatives, such as the Maharlika Highway from Ilocos to Davao, the PGH, Heart Center, Cultural Center, and reclamation of Manila Bay. FVR didn’t borrow much because his government sold many government properties like Fort Bonifacio and Villamor Air Base. But Erap and GMA have no justification for the debts they incurred.

It is always good politics to embark on many projects as concrete evidence of presidential accomplishments, but the people and the future generations should not be unduly burdened to pay for the grandiose ambitions of passing political leaders. And 194 projects are too many and ?9 trillion is too much. There should be a law prohibiting presidents from borrowing too much beyond their capacity to pay during their tenure of office. Ambitions should be aligned with available resources. Presidential over-borrowing is one of the tragedies that the people have to go through, while politicians brag about their so-called accomplishments. It is always the people who are burdened to carry the cross.