The Philippine government is expecting to get some 1.5 billion renminbi (nearly 12 billion pesos) in pledges from the Chinese government for the country's infrastructure project, which will come after President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s state visit to China.
Aside from the grant, the Philippines is also looking forward to coming up with a framework agreement with China for three priority bridges that will cross the Pasig and Marikina rivers as well as the Manggahan floodway.
"And also, we plan to renew the agreement on our participation in the Belt and Road Initiative of China, which we believe complements the infrastructure program of the administration," Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Affairs Neal Imperial said in a pre-departure briefing on Thursday.
According to Imperial, there are other agreements that Marcos and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, along with their government officials, will seal as the two leaders build on the four areas of cooperation they want to strengthen.
The areas of cooperation are: agriculture, infrastructure, energy and people-to-people exchanges.
In the same briefing, Imperial said China will import more durian from the Philippines while Chinese businessmen will possibly invest in the durian industry in Mindanao.
"This is very important too: We expect an agreement to be signed on tourism cooperation called the Implementation Program on the Memorandum on Understanding on tourism cooperation," he said.
"As you well know, China is our largest source of tourism in 2019.. And now that China is planning to reopen, hopefulluy after it recovers from this surge in Covid cases, we want to resume people to people exchanges," he added.
Marcos will fly to China for a state visit from January 3 to 5 and the second in-person meeting with Xi since assuming the presidency. China is the third country he will fly to for a state visit after Indonesia and Singapore.
"One of the main focuses of this visit is really to foster stronger economic cooperation. So we expect a big business delegation... and there will be a lot of business deals that will be signed," Imperial said.