Philippines eyes funding from China-led AIIB  

In a statement, the finance department quoted National Treasurer Roberto Tan as saying that the government “may now request that AIIB send a mission to the country to discuss the proposed list of projects prepared by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) for the bank’s financing”. 
Last month, NEDA Director General Jonathan Uy said that as a whole, 31 projects have been in the pipeline for financing by the Chinese government, including the AIIB.
Tan also told the Senate in November that membership in the AIIB would allow co-financing with the Manila-based multilateral lender Asian Development Bank of the EDSA bus rapid transit (BRT) project, as well as with the World Bank for the Metro Manila flood control project.
“These are the projects that are the most prepared in terms of government approvals, feasibility studies and other requirements, and are already in the pipeline. 
So these projects can be processed most expeditiously for co-financing by AIIB,” Tan explained.
“Funds from AIIB will serve as an additional source of concessional financing to support our growing infrastructure requirements. 
“Its terms and conditions are comparable to those of other multilateral development banks,” according to Tan.
The Duterte administration plans to spend 860.7 billion peso (Bt1.5 trillion) or 5.4 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) on hard infrastructure next year, en route to bringing the infrastructure spending-to-GDP ratio to 7.2 per cent by 2022.
Last December 5, the Senate voted 20-1 to ratify the Philippines’ membership in the Beijing-headquartered AIIB, ahead of the December 31 deadline for submission of prospective members’ instruments of ratificafion.
Tan, who attended an AIIB meeting last week, had said the government would pay the initial tranche of paid-in capital worth $40 million or about 2 billion pesos before year-end, to be sourced from budgetary savings. The Philippines was required to contribute to the AIIB a total of $200 million or about 9.3 billion pesos in paid-in capital, payable in five tranches until 2019. The AIIB’s total capitalisation was $100 billion.
The second and third instalment payments worth 3.72 billion pesos were already included in the proposed 3.35-trillion peso 2017 national budget.
The country will have a total voting power of 12,821 votes or 1.1 per cent of the total voting power across all members, as well as join the proposed constituency comprised of Bangladesh, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal and Thailand.
Since it was established in January, the AIIB already approved loans for seven projects worth $1.13 billion, of which four were co-financed with other multilateral lenders such as the ADB, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank.