21 September 2012, The Philippine Star
by Iris Gonzales
The Aquino administration’s Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program for infrastructure continues to attract strong interest among foreign investors, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said yesterday.
He said Australian investors have expressed interest in participating in the different infrastructure projects lined up by the government.
“A lot of companies are interested. We met with several companies and a lot of them expressed desire to come to Manila,” said Purisima who led a government team in a no-deal roadshow in Australia early this month.
He said that with the PPP program now rolling out, investors are becoming more interested in the different projects in the pipeline.
He also said PPP projects are expected to roll out at a faster pace now that the government has already cleared the bottlenecks.
PPP Center executive director Cosette Canilao, who also attended the roadshow, has said that two PPP projects have caught the interest of Chinese, British and several Japanese investors. “They have expressed interest in the NAIA and LRT projects,” Canilao said.
The PPP Center is preparing to bid out the $1.4 billion LRT Line 1 Cavite Extension and Operations & Management contract as well as the $377.5 million Ninoy Aquino Expressway Phase II road project.
The two projects are part of the eight PPP projects, which the government has targeted to roll out this year.
Because of the strong foreign investor interest in PPP projects, the PPP Center has proposed a review of the Constitutional limit on foreign ownership.
“We are looking at that,” Canilao said in an earlier interview.
Canilao said the government is on track to rolling out all eight projects this year.
