Construction of Davao- Samal Bridge to start before yearend: Diokno
Government is poised to build the long-anticipated Davao-Samal Bridge be-fore this year comes to an end, elating residents from both sides of the water who have dreamed of such a structure over the years.
This was confirmed to the Mirror by Secretary of Budget and Management Benjamin Diokno, who spoke before delegates of the Mindanao Trade and Investment Forum at Marco Polo Davao yester-day.
The high-level confe-rence brought in British investors led by British Ambassador to the Philip-pines Asif Ahmad. Senior members of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce Industry Inc. and the Mindanao Development Authority were also pre-sent. Diokno said the feasi-bility study for the proposed bridge is still being finalized and his office is still sourcing the money.
“In fact for the longest time hindi yun priority ni President Duterte kasi sabi nya ‘hindi naman Davao yun’. We asked him last week sabi niya ‘okay we cannot stop progress, let’s do it’,” Diokno said.
The Davao-Samal Bridge is among the priority infrastructure projects under the Duterte adminis-tration. There’s also the Min-danao Railway System whose construction is sche-duled to start in the fourth quarter of this year. “The Mindanao Rail-way, tinatapos na lang ang FS for the first part, mga 100 kilometers.
Start of construction baka next year. Mabilis lang yun at saka we are still negotia-ting kaya hindi pa ako makapagbigay ng details,” Diokno said.
Diokno said once com-pleted, the railway system will span 2,000 kilometers and connect major cities in Mindanao such as Davao, Zamboanga, Butuan, Suri-gao, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan and General Santos. He also said that be-sides the Chinese Govern-ment, which has been meeting with Philippine economic managers to finalize infrastructure pro-posals, a number of corpo-rate players have expressed interest in investing in the Mindanao Railway Project. These private firms include San Miguel Corpo-ration, Metro Pacific Investment Corporation, Ayala Corporation and Megawide Construction Corporate.
Another project in the pipeline is the Davao City Bypass Construction Pro-ject, scheduled for cons-truction in 2018. At P19.8 billion, this project is expected to lay down and renovate about 60 kilome-ters of roads and tunnels. Diokno said part of the program also is to link Lu-zon to Visayas and Visayas to Mindanao, and a bridge that will link Sorsogon-Northern Samar.
There is another bridge, approxi-mately 28 kilometers long, being planned to link Leyte to Surigao. There’s also the Panguil Bay Bridge that will connect Ozamis Oriental and Lanao del Norte. The bridge will span 4 kilome-ters and is considered the longest bridge thus far. Diokno said there are other railway projects like a train to Clark and a sub-way project but no details yet.
For infrastructure de-velopment this year, government has earmarked close to P900 billion, or 5.3 percent of the nation’s GDP.
“This is only a down-payment because we intend to spend between P8 trillion to P9 trillion for public infrastructure during the entire term of President Duterte,” he said.
Diokno said that on Duterte’s final year in 2022, the country’s infrastructure spending will reach 7.4 percent of GDP. He said this level of spending is “unprecedented.”
“The last time we hit the benchmark of 5 percent of GDP for infrastructure spending was more than30 years ago. In fact, for the last 30 years, we have only been spending 2 to 3 percent of GDP for public infrastructure,” he said.
Diokno said the huge funding for infrastructure will be complemented by implementation reform to ensure that resources are translated to concrete projects. He said the construc-tion of these infrastructure projects aims to make Philippines attractive to investors and to “realize our dream of making the next six years the ‘Golden Age of Infrastructure in the Philippines.”
It will be within this period, he said, that the nation will benefit from the construction and upgrade of roads, bridges, transport systems, school buildings, hospitals, and floodway systems, which in turn will “empower more people and eventually improve trade, spur economic activity, and generate 700,000 jobs and particularly in Region 12,” Diokno added.
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