After being denied a grant under former president Duterte’s administration, the US foreign aid agency Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) is again extending its hands to the Philippines as it sees the country is on the “right pathway forward.”

MCC Chief Executive Officer Mary Albright said that the country’s scorecard has met the qualifications for it to be eligible for a threshold program grant.

“The Philippines, amongst several other countries, stood out as countries that are really on the right pathway forward. So we're back here and we're just delighted for that, and we think there's a promising future,” Albright told reporters during a roundtable discussion.

“So we're back here [the Philippines] and we're just delighted for that, and we think there's a promising future [here],” she added.

With regards to which policy and institutional reforms the threshold fund be injected into, Albright said, “We don't know yet. As I had mentioned, there's some diagnostic work that has to be done.”

The country, along with Tanzania, has been exclusively selected to be granted the threshold after having the compact program.

To recall, the Philippines was granted its first MCC $434 million compact fund in 2010 that helped generate revenue collection, development projects in local areas, and the rehabilitation of a national road on Samar Island.

The MCC establishes the eligibility of a country for assistance programs through a scorecard, which allows it to have an objective comparison of all candidate countries.

The MCC’s scorecard is some sort of measurement of a country’s commitment to democratic governance, investment in people, and economic freedom-- which all have 20 criteria or indicators in total.

The Philippines’ 2024 scorecard so far has passed 11 criteria– inflation, political rights, civil liberties, regulatory quality, trade policy, government effectiveness, gender in the economy, land rights and access, natural resource protection, employment opportunity, and child health.

However, the Philippines’ 2024 scorecard showed failing marks in nine criteria—fiscal policy, control of corruption, rule of law, freedom of information, health expenditures, education expenditures, access to credit, immunization rates, and girls’ lower sec edu completion rate.