The Department of Finance (DoF) is looking to build an online platform to publish the progress of government projects funded through official development assistance (ODA) from foreign governments, bilateral and multilateral partners.

In a statement on Monday, the DoF said the platform will display ODA projects’ details, development, and impact on beneficiaries as discussed in its meeting with several other government agencies last 22 July.

They include the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). The DoF’s International Finance Group (IFG) leads the negotiations for ODA agreements.

Apart from progress reports, the DoF said the government will create ways to streamline processes related to ODA, automate procedures for negotiating projects and their financing terms, and smoothen schedules for implementing projects.

Tighter coordination vowed

“As a result of the discussions, the DoF, DFA and NEDA agreed to establish better coordination arrangements and structures after having identified the bottlenecks in the system,” DoF said.

The DoF added the two other government agencies are helping determine challenges and opportunities in obtaining foreign funds as the Marcos administration aims to upgrade the Philippine status to a predominantly upper middle income country by next year.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. approved a P5.768 trillion national budget for this year, while aggressively promoting partnerships to support major infrastructure projects amounting to P9 trillion.

For 2022, NEDA reported the Asian Development Bank was the country’s biggest ODA provider with 33 percent of the total fund, followed by the Government of Japan with 30.75 percent share and the World Bank with 21.8 percent.