Neda sets Boracay investment plan

The state planning agency National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) is coming out with an investment program for Boracay to determine which initiatives are still necessary for public investments as the private sector is already expected to cover some projects when the island reopens to the public in October.

In an interview last week, Undersecretary Adoracion Navarro said the investment program for Boracay’s rehabilitation and recovery would be similar to what Neda earlier did for the areas outside ground zero of war-torn Marawi City.

“Since there’s a declaration of state of calamity in Boracay, and then to address that, to have corrective measures to rehabilitate Boracay, we need an investment program,” Navarro explained.

Under President Duterte’s order to temporarily shut down and rehabilitate the top tourism destination from April to October, Neda was tasked to come up with an investment program in three months’ time, Navarro said.

“We delivered the first draft but the details and cost are not yet for disclosure because it’s not yet approved,” she said.

Navarro said that Neda was vetting the proposed investment program first just like what they did with the plan for Marawi.

“If you remember in Marawi before, there were overestimated costs because the assumption about the land were high. There were also duplications of projects. So we’re doing the same vetting procedure,” she explained.

The investment program will include the proposed private sector projects as there had been private firms with committed projects for the reopened Boracay, she said.

“In the case of public sector investments, we’re helping the agencies identify and determine what projects are necessary,” she added.

Only about a third of Boracay’s 440 hotels, resorts and inns are ready for the island’s reopening on Oct. 26, according to Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III, although this might still increase as establishments comply with various requirements.

Establishments would be allowed to reopen only if they have connected to the island’s main sewer line or have their own sewage treatment plants and have secured all the required local government and environment permits, Densing said.

Resort and hotel owners have been reluctant to connect to the Boracay water concessionaire’s sewer lines because of the prohibitive cost it entails, as well as the government’s varying pronouncements on what they are required to do.