The aid agencies of the US and Japan, namely, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), have agreed to jointly roll-out development projects in the Philippines.
In a statement, the USAID said its administrator Samantha Power met with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) president Tanaka Akihiko on Sept. 18. Both leaders agreed to pursue joint initiatives on potential areas of development cooperation in the Philippines, Central Asia, and the Pacific Islands.
Recall that last April, as an outcome of the summit in Washington, D.C. among US President Joe Biden, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., the US and Japan announced their plan to jointly develop the Luzon Economic Corridor as the newest — and the first in the Indo-Pacific region — economic corridor of the G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.
As envisioned, the Luzon Economic Corridor shall interconnect Clark and Subic Bay — two former US military bases, now industrial zones — with Batangas and Manila, a project that would potentially accelerate economic development, while creating thousands of jobs and enabling the basing of high technology as well as green enterprises.
This vision is anchored upon the robust existence of a “free and open Indo-Pacific that is connected, prosperous, secure, inclusive, and resilient.” The attainment of this goal is, in turn, based on the free flow of commerce and goods in the South China Sea, a scenario that is dimmed significantly by the ongoing uneasiness in the West Philippine Sea despite the clearcut rulings of the arbitral tribunal in The Hague in July 2016.
President Marcos has welcomed the announcement of the recent US trade mission regarding more than $1 billion in planned US private sector investments that are focused on innovation economy, clean energy transition, and supply chain resilience. Moreover, in the just-concluded 2022-2023 fiscal year, Official Development Assistance (ODA) and private sector investment committed by Japan exceeded the pledge of 600 billion Japanese yen. These twin developments affirm the first trilateral commerce and industry ministers’ shared commitment to ensure steady implementation that would enable the Philippines’ attainment of upper middle income country status and beyond.
In fine, these projects shall be concentrated in mutually agreed priority sectors where high-impact infrastructure projects are critically needed. These include: rail and ports modernization; clean energy; semiconductor supply chains and deployments; agribusiness; and civilian port upgrades at Subic Bay. Trilateral cooperation is also being carried out to enable the transition to clean energy that will create high-standard, clean energy supply chain jobs across the three nations.
Finally, the pivotal lynchpin, as affirmed by President Biden, is the “the ironclad US alliance commitments to both Japan and the Philippines, which have helped safeguard peace and security in the Indo-Pacific for decades.” Mindful of the “repeated obstruction of Philippine vessels’ exercise of high seas freedom of navigation and the disruption of supply lines to Second Thomas Shoal, which constitute dangerous and destabilizing conduct,” both the US and Japan have expressed unconditional support for the Philippines’ assertion of its sovereign rights in the disputed waters.
Indeed, the interests of the Filipino nation are well-served by the unqualified support of the Philippines’ two trusted allies, the United States and Japan.