BY: FAYETTE C. RIÑEN
CEBU CITY, March 26 (PIA) – Malacañang will increase its annual budget allocation for infrastructure development until 2016 to attract more foreign investments into the country and spur employment opportunities.
Budget Secretary Glorencio “Butch” Abad in a recent visit to Cebu declared the national government’s plan to hike the budget for infrastructure development as generating employment and livelihood is one of the four priority areas outlined in the Budget Priority Framework (BPF).
“Last year, we released P275 billion for infra development which has increased to P404 billion for this year. Next year, our budget will rise to P600 billion and in 2016, we intend to raise it to P838 billion,” bared Secretary Abad during the 1st Quarterly Full Council Meeting of the Regional Development Council (RDC-7) held recently in Cebu City.
Abad said by the end of this year, “we will finish the rehabilitation of arterial roads and by next year, the continuing rehabilitation and paving of national and secondary roads and bridges.”
The budget chief further said the government also plans to connect arterial roads to farm-to-market roads and tourism roads to boost opportunities in agri-business and tourism which have bright potentials for economic growth.
“Farm-to-market roads must also be directly linked to post-harvest facilities and ports,” said Abad.
This year will also witness the improvement of eight airports in the country with light landing strip, declared Abad adding that there are also 52 identified fishports for development.
Abad said the Aquino Administration has up the confidence in doing business in the country as the Philippines continuously earned a credit rating upgrade while “Citibank has adjudged the Philippines as the number one investment destination in the region today.”
With the country’s investments grade update, this has reduced our risk profile and decreased the interest rate in our cost of borrowing, said Abad.
There are four priority thrusts under the BPF the administration is concentrating its resources on in order to sustain and further expand national economic growth, bared Abad.
These are in the areas of social protection, employment and livelihood, expanding the economy and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Abad said with the increasing budget poured in putting the necessary infrastructures would mean a high likelihood for foreign and domestic investments to come in. This would translate into more jobs for the people solidifying the administration's ultimate objective of social inclusive growth. (rmn/FCR/PIA-7)