The loan arranger

Suddenly noise cropped up in media about the “build build build” stratagem of the administration to boost the economy.

The reports perhaps got the stimulus from certain senators who loved to assault the motorbiking Duterte Harley for arranging loans from China.

Opinion writers caught the drift from their outbursts, citing as proof one misguided guess masquerading as analysis in the US-based Forbes magazine.

Its writer was a certain Anders Corr, who claimed that “loans” from China in effect would bury us deep in debts.

He said the current $167 billion debt of the country would almost triple to $452 billion due the 10-percent interest rate on the China loans.

Just exactly how he got the high interest rate and the tripling of the amount of the Philippines’ debts remained big mysteries.

Yet nobody could know the terms of the future loans from China—not even clairvoyants in the Department of Finance or in the Bangko Sentral.

But based on reports in the Jakarta Post on the China-funded $5.3-billion Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail, the dollar loan carried a 2-percent yearly interest rate, and the Chinese yuan loan at 3.4 percent.

My neighbor would bet his wife’s inheritance that Duterte Harley could get even lower rates because of the diplomatic dexterity he showed in dealing with China.

Way back in October 2016, for instance, Duterte already announced that he would attend the “belt and road” initiative of China that was set for May 2017 yet.

In a recent conference dubbed as OBOR, or “One Belt One Road,” he secured the P3.6-billion funding from China for two bridges across the Pasig River.

It was part of the $25-billion “economic cooperation” package that he sealed with two top Chinese officials in Davao City a couple of months ago.

All of a sudden, senators called on him to disclose the terms of all funding from China, as if he was keeping them as his personal secrets.

They said they only wanted to assure the citizenry that the loans had no evil intent or bad breath or AIDS virus or something.

One senator for instance called for the investigation of the “build build build” program because of the “danger of the long-term onerous indebtedness” with China.

OK—the OBOR would be China’s shot at economic dominance in Asia and Africa, or even Europe, through its infrastructure projects in some 65 countries (combined GDP of $21 trillion).

Duterte Harley nevertheless was in good company in the OBOR conference, with the economic world powers United States and Japan sending heavyweight representatives to it, actually deciding at the last minute to consider the China initiative.

Like it or not, OBOR would be for the modern version of the ancient “silk road.”

And that would be bad for the Philippines, which just placed No. 90 (out of 140 countries) in the infrastructure index of the Global Competitiveness Report, annual rating by the World Economic Forum, even placing 106th in “quality of infrastructure,” because of poor seaports (104th), airports (98th), roads (97th), and rails (84th)?

And we ranted about onerous terms about loan that we know nothing about.

The granddaddy of the ranting was precisely this certain Corr, the contributor of Forbes magazine.

From what I gathered, Corr had a doctorate degree from Harvard, and he even graduated in Yale summa cum laude—i.e. he could not be dumb.

Now he established his own outfit called Corr Analytics for strategic analysis of international politics.

There—it was all about politics!

At one time, from what I gathered, he was an associate for Bozz Allen Hamilton, a military contractor of the US government, tagged by Bloomberg as “the world’s most profitable spy organization.”

Now Bozz Allen Hamilton should ring a bell, being the employer of Edward Snowden, the computer guy who leaked classified documents to the world about the eavesdropping done by the US government on its citizens.

Corr was its “intelligence director” for the Pacific Command, which included the Philippines.