By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

The Department of Finance (DOF) recently announced the proposed Panay-Guimaras-Negros Bridge project may be funded through loans from China.

In a statement by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, he assured the public that funds from the Chinese government will be used towards the benefit of the Filipino people.

The bridge project, a key project of President Rodrigo Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” program, is earmarked at P40 billion.

In an article published in Time Magazine last August, Grant T. Harris, a senior director for Africa during the administration of former US President Barack Obama, offered a warning when it came to borrowing from China.

“Chinese debt has become the methamphetamines of infrastructure finance: highly addictive, readily available, and with long-term negative effects that far outweigh any temporary high,” he wrote.

“In Africa and elsewhere, governments have secured massive loans from Beijing using strategic assets – such as oil, minerals, and land rights – as collateral,” Harris explained. “If borrower nations find themselves unable to repay the loan, China can claim the strategic asset.”

However, in an interview earlier this month with DZMM-AM, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr. assured the country would not fall into a “China debt trap,” calling the Philippines “the experts in bad loans.”

A Chinese team from CCCC Highway Consultants Co. Ltd. is currently surveying the project./DGB, WDJ