By Sheldeen Joy Talavera, Reporter
THE PHILIPPINES can hit sustainable goals in its infrastructure and mobility sectors by fixing policy and regulatory bottlenecks, industry players said.
“We need to be agile in terms of execution,” Roderick M. Danao, chairman and a senior partner at PwC Philippines, told the BusinessWorld Forecast 2025 economic forum on Tuesday. “We need to fix the bottlenecks, and we need to ensure that we move forward fast.”
He said investors want “predictability” in policies and the ease of doing business. The government must also show “political will” in achieving goals, he added.
“We need political will. We need to make it happen, otherwise, we will not achieve our long-term sustainable goals,” he said.
For the mobility sector, the Philippines needs a consistent framework for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, according to Jaime Alfonzo Zobel de Ayala, chief executive officer at AC Mobility Holdings, Inc.
“There’s going to be charging stations with a lot of different formats, and making sure there’s consistency in how we’re managing safety regulations across is quite important,” he said.
He added that there is a need for “a little bit more clarity on standardization” between charging stations.
AC Mobility, the mobility solution arm of the Ayala group, boasts 111 EV charging points across 50 sites.
Jean-Baptiste Dreanic, deputy general manager at ENGIE Services Philippines, said sustainable energy is critical for infrastructure developments.
“Today, there are some ease of doing business and tax incentives in place, which is very promising. We need to continue to do those initiatives,” he said.
ENGIE Services Philippines is a unit of the French utility company ENGIE, which operates in 31 countries. The company provides sustainable energy solutions including district cooling systems and integrated facility management services to commercial and industrial clients.
The Philippine unit has 19 megawatts-peak (MWp) of renewable energy projects via business-to-business transactions in operation or under construction. It also has large-scale renewable energy projects with a capacity of 300 MWp.
