Infra seen as key to attracting investment for industrialization

THE PHILIPPINES will need to build sustainable digital and physical infrastructure to attract more investment needed to industrialize, PwC Philippines said.

“I think for us to be economically progressive, we should industrialize. We cannot just simply rely on domestic consumption to drive the economy,” PwC Philippines Chair Roderick M. Danao told BusinessWorld on the sidelines of Philippine Infrastructure Summit 2026.

“We need to have more manufacturing facilities in the Philippines, not only for domestic consumption, but also for export, and that will make our economy truly progressive and inclusive,” he added.

Mr. Danao said infrastructure is critical in the process of attracting more investment.

“I would say the investors would generally look at (the state of our) infrastructure,” he said.

“We need to build more toll roads,a fast transport system, and digital infrastructure has to be strengthened too,” he added.

He said a better mass transport system will also help shield the country from external energy shocks “by reducing reliance on gasoline and diesel,” he said.

“By moving people faster at just a fraction of the cost … that means better purchasing power for our people, better well-being,” he added.

Transportation Undersecretary Timothy John R. Batan said that Manila ranked 146th out of around 279 urban centers in terms of the percentage of the urban population that is within a kilometer from a major rail system.

“Rail is a very efficient investment in terms of people-movement ratio as well as in terms of carbon-footprint ratio. We simply can move more people on the same parcel of land, the same amount of space, physically, than any other mode of transport,” he said.

From an environmental and sustainability perspective, he said that rail systems have one of the lower carbon footprints among the various transport modes.

He said the country also ranks last among the eight major Association of Southeast Asian Nations economies in terms of transport infrastructure adequacy.

Mr. Batan said that the government has been trying to address this challenge since the 1970s.

“We had transport master plans that have identified and recommended corridors in the capital that are fit for mass transport or rails,” he said.

“Unfortunately… our ability to get a rail project from being identified and conceptualized to being built, has been lagging for decades. And that is why we have been left behind vis-a-vis our neighbors,” he added.

He said the Philippines currently has 18 public-private rail projects in the pipeline, with declared as priorities.

These are the Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 7 Cavite Extension; Metro Rail Transit (MRT) Line 7; the rehabilitation of MRT Line 3 and LRT Line 2; appointing operators for the North-South Commuter Railway and Metro Manila Subway Project; and the Philippine Automated Fare Collection System. — Justine Irish D. Tabile