THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT has offered the Philippines $300 million in official development assistance (ODA), according to a senior official the Department of Finance (DoF).
“We have received another offer from an ODA partner and this time around it’s from the Spanish government for $300 million worth of ODA over the next three years,” Finance Assistant Secretary Maria Edita Z. Tan told reporters last week.
Ms. Tan said that the Spanish government’s preferences include the infrastructure, energy, renewable energy, telecommunications, water treatment, solid waste, agro-industrial, food industry, and the tourism sectors, adding “they are actually interested to provide support to their construction firms, contractors”.
Although both parties have yet to sign a memorandum of understanding for the ODA, she said that “the terms are very good.”
Ms. Tan said that the Philippines can tap either the euro or dollar loan facility offered by Spain. “For the euro it’s 0.25% over a 35-year period inclusive of a 10-year grace period. while the dollar facility is 1.15% over a 20-year period inclusive of a 10-year grace period. That could cover either projects program loans,” said the Finance official.
She said that the Finance department and the Spanish government began bilateral discussions for the ODA late last year.
Ms. Tan expects that both parties would ink the MOU “within the next two months.”
“Previously we’ve never tapped this facility. There was an export credit (facility), but this one is the first ODA, pure ODA. But I think there have been some grants in the past,” she said.
In June, South Korea pledged $1 billion in ODA to the Duterte administration. Both China and Japan have also pledged $9 billion of ODA to the government in 2016 and 2017, respectively. — Elijah Joseph C. Tubayan

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