The Philippines is rushing to complete a delayed World Bank-funded flood control project covering Metro Manila before the loan financing ends next year.

In a Nov. 5 implementation status and results report for the Metro Manila Flood Management Project, the World Bank said that disbursements of the loan it approved back in 2017 had already reached 62.36 percent to date, or $115.33 million out of the reduced financing amounting to $184.94 million.

As such, $69.61 million in World Bank financing still needs to be spent before the extended closing date of Nov. 30, 2026.

The World Bank said that project implementation has so far “[achieved] 1,540 hectares (ha) out of a target of 2,673 ha of land that are free of water within 24 hours after a major rainfall,” which will protect 675,455 Metro Manila residents from floods—more than half of the targeted total of over 1.056 million.

“An additional 59 cubic meters per second of pumping capacity has been achieved and a total of 10 kilometers (km) of waterways have been cleaned. Of the 553 total project-affected households, 475 have been relocated as of end-October 2025,” the World Bank said.

The Washington-based multilateral lender noted that since the project is in its final year of implementation, two of its implementing agencies—the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA)—“are focusing on completing all contracts by the closing date in November 2026.”

The World Bank continued to rate the project as “moderately satisfactory” in its overall implementation progress.

As the Manila Bulletin reported earlier, the Philippine government and the World Bank in November 2024 signed amendments to their loan agreement for the original $207.6-million project financing, including a two-year extension of the originally seven-year loan implementation period, which was supposed to lapse last year.

To recall, the Philippines in 2017 borrowed a combined $415.2 million from the World Bank and the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to bankroll most of the costs for this project, which was originally intended to protect 1.7 million Filipinos living near 56 “potentially critical” drainage systems across 11,110 ha of flood-prone areas in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Through the national budget, the government would shoulder the remaining $84.8 million for this $500-million flood control project, which is being jointly implemented by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the DPWH, and MMDA.

However, implementation had been sluggish—starting with project design, as well as determining the number and location of drainage and pumping station sites. It also did not help that red tape delayed procurement.

Since the project’s rollout was prolonged, the larger implication is that the Philippines missed its original goal of completing it last year to make targeted NCR areas free of water within 24 hours after a major rainfall.

Had this World Bank- and AIIB-backed project been implemented as scheduled, flooding experienced in the aftermath of last year and this year’s strong typhoons that battered Metro Manila could have been avoided.

On top of the prolonged loan closing date, the World Bank also agreed to the Philippine government’s proposal to slash $22.7 million each from the two lenders’ counterpart financing.

Despite scaling back the loan terms, the Philippines will continue to repay these concessional or low-interest loans over a 25-year period, inclusive of a 14-year grace period under the original 2017 agreement.

While loan restructuring documents seen by Manila Bulletin last year partly blamed the stringent lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic for the slow rollout, the World Bank also lamented that “frequent changes within the MMDA leadership (five chairmen in five years) further impacted procurement and disbursements.”

“The sum of these challenges set project implementation back by roughly two years,” the World Bank said last year.