₱778 Billion Railway 95 KM Connecting Connecting Manila to Clark will open on 2022

 

Philippines awards final two contracts for Malolos – Clark line

PHILIPPINE National Railways (PNR) and the Philippines Department of Transportation (DOTr) have awarded the two remaining construction contracts for the 53km Malolos – Clark section of its North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) project.

The contracts, designated packages 2 and 3, cover a total of 28 km of viaduct and six stations in the northern province of Pampanga, and have a combined value of ₱56.47 billion Php ($1.17 billion US Dollars ).

Package 2, worth ₱ 33.7 illion Php, was awarded to a joint venture of Acciona Construction Philippines and Daelim Industrial, and covers the construction of 16km of viaduct and stations in Minalin, Santo Tomas and San Fernando.

Package 3, worth ₱22.77 billion Php, was awarded to Italian-Thai Development, and covers the construction of 12km of viaduct and stations in San Fernando, Angeles and Mabalacat.

The contracts are the last two of five packages for the section. Package 1 was awarded to a Hyundai-led consortium on September 18, and Packages 4 and 5 were awarded on August 1. Package 4 was awarded to a partnership of EEI and Acciona, and 5 to Posco, Korea.

Construction on the Malolos – Clark line is scheduled to begin in November, with the section currently expected to begin partial operation in 2022. When completed, the new railway will connect Malolos, Bulacan, to Clark International Airport in Mabalacat, offering end-to-end journey times of 30-35 minutes, compared with journey of 1h 30min.

The section is part of the larger 148km NSCR project, which is expected to cost around ₱777.55 billion, and is co-financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (Jica).

Philippines awards contract for Malolos – Clark project

$573 million US Dollars contract to construct a section of the Malolos – Clark Railway project was ararded to a Hyundai-led consortium.

The Package 1 contract, which was awarded on September 18, covers the construction of 17km of viaduct northwest of Manila, and two elevated stations in Calumpit and Apalit.  

The consortium, led by Hyundai Engineering and Construction, which holds a 57.5% controlling share, also comprises Dong-ah Geological Engineering, Korea, and Megawide Construction, Philippines.

The contract is part of the planned 53km Malolos – Clark Railway, which will connect Malolos, a city north of Manila, with Clark International Airport and economic zone.

Package 1 follows the awarding of contracts for Package 4 to a partnership of EEI and Acciona Construction Philippines, and Package 5 to Posco, Korea. The contracts cover the construction of 6.3km of main line and 1.6km of depot access line, as well as Clark airport station, a depot at Mabalacat, an operations control centre (OCC) and other buildings.

Contracts for two packages have yet to be awarded. These are:

* Package 2, which covers construction of 16km including San Fernando station, and

* Package 3, which covers 12km of line including Angeles station.

Malolos – Clark is the second of three phases in the country’s broader 148km North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) project, which will run between New Clark City, Pampanga, and Calambra, Laguna and cost around ₱777.55 billion ($15.8 billion US Dollars) when completed.

The NSCR is currently scheduled for completion is 2025, and is intended to reduce congestion across the Manila metropolitan area.

The project is partially funded through financial support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (Jica). Read more from Rail journal page 1 and two 

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European Investor to Pour €4 Billion Euros to Revive National Steel Corporation in Iligan City

Iligan City — A new, state-of-the-art fully integrated steel mill is poised to rise again in this once touted as the industrial city of the south.

Iligan City Mayor Celso Regencia has acknowledged last week the intent of a foreign-funded consortium in the amount of 4B euros for the rebirth of the new National Steel Corporation.

The development came as a big surprise after a series of failed investment proposals — mostly from Chinese groups — were presented before the pandemic to Mayor Regencia for the plan to rebuild the defunct NSC.

Mayor Regencia had expressed optimism the latest investment proposal would push through as it were considering the seriousness of the consortium to proceed amid the growing threat of Covid-19.

“We are bullish with the development to re-construct the mothballed NSC as this would place Iligan City once again in the country’s industrial map”, Regencia said.

The reconstruction phase is set to start late this year by a European supplier of equipment and physical plants to the metal industry.

National Steel Corporation (NSC) was the Asia's Largest Steel Factory before it was sold by former President Fidel V. Ramos to Malaysia and was become so controversial for the alleged Corruption but Ramos denied the accusation. 

Read related article: - Ramos Killed NSC Asia's Biggest Steel Factory in ILigan City to allow China Dominates the Philippines 

The 400-hectare property of the old NSC is now owned by the city government of Iligan after undergoing a series of legal battles with bank liquidators.

Settlement for the buy-out of the property is now in the last ditch of negotiations with the consortium group.

As a driver of economic growth, the new NSC is expected to generate thousands of jobs to the people of Iligan and the rest of the region.

The country has lost its presence in the steel industry sector after the old NSC had experienced a series of downfalls, latest of which was in the hands of Global Steel, a Malaysian manufacturing group.

With the revival of the old NSC into a modern steel making plant, the economy of Iligan City and the rest of Mindanao will definitely shoot up to an unprecented level of progress, Regencia added.

From Ruffy Magbanua of Mindanao Daily News

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The Philippines Per Capita GDP Has Reached An All-Time High Under Duterte

Erik De Castro | Reuters
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte

The average Filipino is doing better under Duterte.

When it comes to Per Capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that is. That’s a measure of the total output of a country divided by the number of people in that country.

The Philippines’ Per Capita GDP was last recorded at an all-time high 2891.36 US dollars in 2017, according to Tradingeconomics.com. That’s well above the average of 1627.98 USD for the period 1960-2017.

Also, Filipinos are doing better under Duterte when Per Capita GDP is adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP). That measure, too, reached a record 7599.19 US dollars in 2017, well above the average of 4969.71 USD for the period 1990-2017.

Source: Tradingeconomics.com 10/26/2018

To be fair, comparing Per Capita GDP in USD for different time periods is a tricky exercise. Numbers can be distorted by population growth and currency fluctuations. For instance, the climb in the Philippines per capita GDP has been helped by a slow-down in population growth. It's also an ongoing trend that can be traced back to the Aquino administration, which brought macroeconomic stability to the country.

“Aquino is delegating power to competent technocrats and seems to understand what needs to be done to get the lights back on,”  wrote Ruchir Sharma in Break Out Nations (W.W. Norton Company, 2012).

Macroeconomic stability has helped the Philippines economy demonstrate a great deal of resilience in recent years. At the end of 2017, it grew at an annual 6.9% in the September quarter. That’s the strongest growth since the third quarter 2016. And the Philippines’ economy was still growing at 6% at the end of 2018.

Tracing Per Capita GDP growth back to the Aquino period certainly raises the question: who should take credit for the record Per Capita GDP, Aquino or Duterte?

Meanwhile, a recent McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) study places the Philippines among the few emerging market economies that are well-prepared to achieve sustained growth over the next decade.

That's thanks to a rise in Gross Fixed Capital Formation (investment). It reached 695414.08 PHP Million in the second quarter of 2018 from roughly 450,000 PHP Million in July of 2015--well above the 303138.16 PHP Million for the period 1998 until 2018, and an all-time high.

Still, the Philippines’ per capita GDP is equivalent to 23% of the world's average, which makes Filipinos poor. And a resurgence in the cost of living in recent months makes things worse for them. The Philippines' annual inflation rate rose to 6.7% in September of 2018 from 6.4% in the August, and compared to market expectations of 6.8%.

That’s the highest reading since February 2009, thanks to soaring food, transportation and utility prices.

Inflation, together with revolution and corruption, has suspended Philippines economic progress before, and it will do it again, if they aren’t addressed effectively.

So rather than celebrating record per capita GDP, Duterte’s administration should keep an eye on the price of bread and rice.


Panos Mourdoukoutas
Contributor

I’m Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post in New York. I also teach at Columbia University. I’ve published several articles in professional journals and magazines, including Barron’s, The New York Times, Japan Times, Newsday, Plain Dealer, Edge Singa...

My recent book The Ten Golden Rules Of Leadership is published by AMACOM, and can be found here.

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