By Joann Villanueva/PNA
MANILA — Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has stressed that the new age of cooperation between the Philippines and China, as made abundantly clear by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ongoing visit, will go a long way towards poverty reduction and improving the Filipinos’ overall quality of life.
“There is a Chinese saying that (it is) better to have a good friend as a neighbor than a relative who is far away,” he said in a recent interview by China Radio International (CRI).
Xi arrived in Manila for his first state visit in the country on Tuesday and will stay until Wednesday. This is the last leg of his official state visits, scheduled between November 15-21. He earlier travelled to Papua New Guinea and Brunei.
In a news release, CRI said Dominguez noted that Xi’s visit to the Philippines aims to deepen and strengthen the Sino-Philippines relations. He said several agreements between the two countries will be signed during Xi’s visit and these include those for infrastructure financing.
The Duterte administration has increased the government’s infrastructure spending because of its importance in sustaining the domestic economy’s expansion.
It plans to invest at least PHP8 trillion until the end of its term in 2022 to finance the construction of various infrastructure projects that will benefit even remote areas across the country. “The projects that China are financing for the Philippines will certainly contribute to reducing poverty and make life more comfortable for Filipinos,” Dominguez said.
The finance chief said the Chinese government has committed to fund the construction of a dam in northern Luzon to help boost rice harvest in the area. Another project it intends to finance is the construction of the Kaliwa Dam in Quezon province, which, in turn, will boost water supply in Metro Manila.
Other projects that the Chinese government targets to finance are railway systems and airports.
Meanwhile, Dominguez said the Philippine government is looking at issuing another renminbi-denominated Panda bond in 2019 and the volume targeted is twice the initial 1.46-billion renminbi issuance.
The Philippines’ inaugural Panda bond, which received 9.22-billion renminbi worth of bids, was issued last March. It fetched a coupon rate of 5 percent, the lower end of its 5 percent to 5.6 percent price guidance.
With greater ties between the Philippines and China, the Bank of China and 13 local banks signed last October a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on the establishment of the Philippine Renminbi Trading Community.
This community, targeted to be in place in late November, hopes to lower the cost of trading between Filipino and Chinese businessmen since it will provide a direct conversion of the Philippine peso to the renminbi and vice versa instead of using a third currency, which is the US dollar. “This should save around 3 percent of cost now,” Dominguez added.
