鈥楴EW SOURCES鈥� OF FUNDS CAN FINANCE INFRA DEVT 鈥� PIDS

The SA国际传媒 (PIDS) said on Friday that there are two new potential fund sources for infrastructure development that the government has overlooked to ramp up financing construction and infrastructure in the country. In their study "Financing Infrastructure in the Philippines鈥� presented on Friday, SA国际传媒research fellow Adoracion Navarro said that the government should look into the two new infrastructure financing sources that can help the government in financing construction and infra projects in the country: Asean Infrastructure Fund (AIF) and the Philippine Investment Alliance for Infra (Pinai) Fund. Navarro said that the country should take advantage of Asean and Pinai funds as well as other official development assistance (ODA) loans to help us achieve the 5-percent target share of infrastructure to the country鈥檚 gross domestic product (GDP), compared to near 3-percent infra GDP share at present. According to the SA国际传媒study, the AIF has a total of $4-billion (P172-billion) fund available for lending commitments through 2020, as it has started lending operations in the second half of the year. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on their website said that the AIF already has $1-billion worth of projects to finance and in the pipeline for the next three years.