The Asian Development Bank plans to help the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) to establish a localized public private partnership (PPP) center to vet possible PPP projects in Mindanao.
“We will help MinDA to establish a PPP (center) which will be an extension of the national program. This will be one of the first steps which we will take to build local capacity in PPPs,” Richard Bolt, ADB Country Director for the Philippines, said in a press briefing yesterday.
Bolt said that the ADB is supporting the Philippines’ PPP program through policy loans and capacity development.
“There are PPPs that need to be handled nationally. But there’s a lot of projects that need to be looked at locally,” he said.
Among others, Bolt cited solid waste management, water supply sanitation, and regional expressways as possible PPP projects in Mindanao.
“The idea is to build a capacity of agencies, such as MinDA, to play their role in that,” Bolt said.
Bolt clarified that MinDA will not serve as a transactions adviser, since that is the role of the Project Development and Monitoring Facility, established under the PPP Center.
“But at least (we will) provide MinDA with the ability to do several things, for example, one of the first steps of any PPP project is, is this project suitable for PPP? This is why you do this value for money analysis. If it looks like something that can get private sector involvement, then you can put it up for development as a PPP,” Bolt said.
“It is to help MinDA to do that calculations. MinDA’s responsibility in on regional development planning and monitoring. It’s to help them to understand within the plan what is for PPP and what is for public investment,” he added.
MinDA was formerly known as Mindanao Economic Development Council, which aims to promote and coordinate the active participation of all sectors for socio-economic development in Mindanao.
