The administration of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr is continuing its embrace of public-private partnership (PPP) projects, in stark contrast with the previous Duterte administration, which all but shelved the programme that sees private companies build, operate and then transfer ownership of landmark infrastructure projects to the government.

Earlier last week, during the Build Better More Infrastructure Forum in Cebu City in the Visayas region of the country, PPP Center executive director Maria Cynthia Hernandez announced that another nine projects have been added to the PPP pipeline, bringing the total value of these projects in various stages of bid out and implementation to 3.095 trillion Philippine pesos (US$52.94 billion).

The nine projects are worth a combined 65 billion pesos, Hernandez says, bringing the total number of PPP projects nationwide up to 143, as of July 2024. Of these, 100 are national level projects, while the remaining 43 are local government ones.

Currently, 102 of the 143 projects are in the negotiation phase, 102 are in the preparation phase, 10 are awaiting approval and eight, already in the procurement phase.

Hernandez says the PPP Center, which she leads, is the “touchpoint” for several international agencies that want to assist in the development of PPPs.

Like the recently bid-out 170-billion-peso Ninoy Aquino International Airport rehabilitation project, which was won by a San Miguel conglomerate-led consortium, most of the additional nine PPP projects, Hernandez notes, started life as unsolicited project proposals from various companies.

Earlier in February, San Miguel Corporations’ SAP Company Consortium won the contract to rehabilitate the ailing international aerial gateway to the Philippines. The consortium is composed of San Miguel Holdings, RMM Asian Logistics, RLW Aviation Development and South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corporation.