After the World Bank loan for the delayed project aimed at mitigating flooding in Metro Manila was extended last year, the Washington-based multilateral lender reported implementation progress at a number of pumping stations.
In a March 27 implementation status and results report, the Washington-based multilateral lender noted that in component one of the Metro Manila flood management project, 16 of the 34 pumping stations had already been rehabilitated, with 18 more scheduled for completion by February 2026.
The World Bank said that four new pumping stations and dredging are expected to be finished by September next year under the first project component.
In the second component, the World Bank noted that 85 of 200 barangays in the project area have improved solid waste management, with 185 more to be added by October this year. "Material recovery facilities (MRFs) will be completed by July 2026," it added.
As for the third phase, the World Bank said 282 informal settler families (ISFs) in Vitas had already been resettled, on top of 139 of the targeted 209 ISFs in Malabon. Additionally, resettlement action plans (RAPs) have been cleared.
As such, the World Bank rated the project's overall implementation progress as "moderately satisfactory."
To date, 46.8 percent, or $86.51 million, out of the $184.94-million World Bank's investment project financing has been disbursed, leaving the bigger chunk of the loan, amounting to $98.43 million, to be spent by November 2026.
As 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 the bulk of the costs for this project, which is intended to protect 1.7 million Filipinos living near 56 "potentially critical" drainage systems across 11,110 hectares (ha) of flood-prone areas in the National Capital Region (NCR).
Through the national budget, the government would shell out 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 Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
However, implementation has been sluggish, starting with project design, as well as determining the number and location of drainage and pumping station sites. It 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 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's strong typhoons that battered Metro Manila could have been avoided.
On top of the prolonged loan closing date, the World Bank has 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 agreement in 2017.
While loan restructuring documents, seen by Manila Bulletin last year, partly blamed the most stringent lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic for the slow rollout, the World Bank 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.