Of course, Vietnam has an edge over the Philippines. The Philippines is fragmented and is made up of more than 7,100 islands, making infrastructure maintenance and development of its roads, rails, bridges, ports, and airports a continual challenge as they are the lifeblood for the transport of goods and services for nearly 120 million residents, and are essential to the country’s continued economic growth.
Providing an island with electricity through submarine power cables is very expensive, not to mention its maintenance. Most of our islands have little to no source of potable water. Thermal distillation plant to turn saltwater to drinkable water is expensive and a small island cannot afford that. We don’t have the great Mekong River unlike Vietnam, Thailand, and the rest of mainland South East Asia. Due to it, the country cannot produce more rice than needed.
Since the Philippines is fragmented, the country invested more airports. We have more than 200 airports and airstrips across the country, we have 15 international airports, 30 domestic airports, 40 community airports, 164 airstrips and 21 military airfields. There are more airports to be constructed or is under construction, 6 more international airports and 14 domestic airports. Vietnam has only around 23 international and domestic airports. Although we have many airports, we actually need more since the country is fragmented.
Although the country has 130 major ports and more than 700 commercial ports, the capacity of international port is still not enough relative to the economy.
Internet in the Philippines is also slow compared to its piers and neighbors. The government should focus on pressuring companies in building more cell towers and improve services.
There is a silver lining. For the past decade, the country has also been using public-private partnerships (PPPs) to attract more private participation to infrastructure projects. The PPP structures themselves depend on several factors: the types of projects involved, such as power generation or toll roads; the potential for revenue generation to repay private investors; and the overall costs of raising capital. Not all infrastructure projects lend themselves to a public-private partnership structure, but those that do often run up against barriers—some of them regulatory, some of them a regulatory void—that prevent greater access to the capital that could propel more projects to completion more rapidly.
President Duterte’s push to improve infrastructure includes partnerships with foreign governments that have pledged overseas development assistance (ODA). China and Japan have provided infrastructure ODA for years but have recently committed significantly more funding.
Footnotes
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