Australia plans to pour in development financing worth 45 million Australian dollars (about P1.69 billion) to the Philippines starting next year to further boost trade and investments, especially in the mining and minerals sector.
Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Hae Kyong (HK) Yu told a press briefing on Friday, Sept. 6, that Australia's forthcoming economic growth development program is currently being finalized and co-designed with the Philippine government.
Full program implementation is expected to begin in early 2024, Yu said on the sidelines of a breakfast forum with the high-level, 15-person Australian business mission visiting the Philippines.
The Australian envoy said the upcoming five-year financing aims to support the Philippines' overall economic growth.
"In recent years, we could see that economic growth was one of the most important priorities of the Philippines. So we have actually made a very conscious decision to use part of our development money to focus on economic growth," Yu said.
"A big chunk of this is really about helping the Philippines achieve good economic reforms," he added.
Yu noted that during the last 50 years, the Philippines has been the beneficiary of the Australian government's fifth-biggest aid program.
In particular, ongoing and future Australian economic support to the Philippines involved the still largely untapped mining industry, the envoy said.
"The Australian government had been helping the Philippine government to set-up an appropriate framework [on] taxes and licensing of the mining sector, by sharing our experience with the relevant departments here in the Philippines," she noted.
Also, the Australian government had been matching Philippine mining companies with Australia's mining equipment, technology and services firms, she added. "Quite a lot of that has actually already gone into concrete contracts or engagement between those companies."
The new economic growth development program will also help further strengthen the Philippine mining sector by sharing how Australian indigenous communities work with big corporations Down Under towards inclusive and sustainable mining.
Shemara Wikramanayake, Australia's "business champion" for the Philippines who's also the chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director of Sydney-based global financial services giant Macquarie Group, pointed out that there's 1.3 trillion metric tons (MT) of mineral reserves in the country.
"But there hasn't been a lot of foreign investment to develop them, in areas like copper, gold and cobalt. The Philippines is rich in these minerals... So we've got [Australian] mining companies that are talking with Philippine partners on how they can together develop these reserves," Wikramanayake said.
Since mining firms usually inject massive capital into such investments, "they need a certainty of framework" for their projects to materialize, Wikramanayake noted.
Bilateral trade between the Philippines and Australia last year reached P378 billion, of which P229-billion worth were in goods and P149 billion were in services.
Two-way investment amounted to P321 billion in 2023, with Australian investments in the Philippines worth P277 billion dwarfing Filipino investments in Australia amounting to P44 billion.