An ambitious project that will connect four major business hubs in Luzon is about to come as the Philippines, the United States and Japan discussed ways to expedite the country's economic growth.
A senior White House official announced Thursday, April 11, that an “economic corridor” that will connect Subic Bay, Clark, Manila and Batangas will be established “to accelerate coordinated investments in high-impact infrastructure projects."
That included ports, rail, clean energy, semiconductors, supply chains, and other forms of connectivity in the Philippines.
The project, according to the official, will be called PGI Luzon Corridor — the first ever PGI (Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment) corridor in the Indo-Pacific region.
“We will be holding events and setting up a steering committee to accelerate the work on this Luzon corridor, and the Development Finance Corporation will open its first regional office in the Philippines as part of this announcement,” the official said.
Although he did not provide any other details, he said the US government is expecting that “it will take some time for the full suite of investments that we’ve envisioned here to come to pass.”
“As I mentioned, we’re standing up a steering committee of high-level US, Philippines, and Japanese government officials to ensure that we are steering private sector investment to exactly the types of projects that this corridor needs to improve, as well as bringing a full suite of U.S. government tools to bear,” he said.
Another senior White House official bared that several US companies will also announce new investments in the Philippines.
That include businesses in the fields of undersea cables, logistics, clean energy, and also telecommunications.
These developments came as President Marcos, US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hold for the first time a trilateral summit to explore various areas, including economic ties.
"The Us Development Finance Corporation will be standing up an office in the Philippines to help to steer this work. And the US Trade and Development Agency has announced a number of new activities in the Philippines that will help to support it as well," the official said.
"Suffice it to say that we take very seriously all of the work that we’re doing in the Philippines. There will also be a number of announcements tomorrow by way of private sector investment in the Philippines that we’ll be announcing anew, and those will come from Meta, UPS, GreenFire Energy, and Astranis telecommunications satellites," he added.