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February 17, 2025 | 12:00am
A major problem of our government is its lack of focus or an ability to follow through a big project from inception to completion. This is particularly true with projects that are started by one administration and meant to be completed by another. Often, a new administration will just start a new project. This results in wasted time and resources, neither of which our economy has any to spare.
Last week, Housing Secretary Jose Rizalino Acuzar revealed that the government is in the process of planning a new 70,000-hectare city in Quezon province for a new city to decongest Metro Manila and ease traffic. No timetable or more specifics were made available.
Actually, the idea is not new. The Malaysians created PutraJaya, about 25 kilometers south of Kuala Lumpur as its administrative capital way back in 1995. Indonesia has started building an ambitious national capital city in the last years of Joko Widodo’s presidential term. The government center will be moved from Jakarta in Java to Kalimantan or Borneo. Named Nusantara, some government operations are supposed to start there in five years.
The Aquino and Duterte administrations were looking at Clark as this new city where government offices, universities and special economic zones will be located. A lot of work has been done, including detailed planning of the urban design features. But the project hasn’t moved significantly because there had been no political will to get it going. Only DOTr under then secretary Art Tugade moved its offices to Clark.
One major hindrance to Clark taking off as our new government center is slow infrastructure development. But things have moved faster in recent years as outgoing DOTr Sec. Jimmy Bautista prioritized the completion of the rail system that connects Clark to Metro Manila. That will cut into half the current two-hour travel time from Metro Manila.
A new international airport built in accordance with world-class standards has also started to operate with domestic and international flights. As the island flights are being moved from NAIA to Clark, the airport will provide connectivity to tourist centers specially in the Visayas.
New international hotels have also started operations in Clark. But Clark cannot succeed if all it has to offer are casinos and golf. Clark has so much space for more diversified economic activities if it is better marketed by Clark Development Corp. and BCDA. Sayang. It even has a world-class hospital, Medical City Clark, providing an essential service in the part of Central Luzon. In other words, Clark is now half baked to becoming what two administrations meant it to be. The grand plan proposed back in 2012 by Arnel Casanova, then BCDA chairman, is to transform a 9,450-hectare land in Capas, Tarlac, into a planned metropolis called the New Clark City that can accommodate up to 1.2 million people. BCDA had signed a 50-year contract with the Filinvest Group for the development of a 288-hectare land in the New Clark City into a mixed-use township.
The idea is to make Clark the new seat of the national government by 2030. Actually, the adjoining Pampanga towns are booming in anticipation of Clark’s development. Even Rockwell Land and other property developers are actively building around Clark.
That’s why it seems strange that the government is now going to focus on another growth center in Southern Luzon. With just three more years left in BBM’s term, it is better to complete a project we have been talking about and invested so much money on.
The prospects for Clark have brightened even more with the appointment of Vince Dizon as DOTr Secretary. A native of Pampanga and a former BCDA president, Vince will now have the opportunity to complete the task he helped start some years ago for Clark’s development. His main concern now is helping acquire all the ROW needed to complete the JICA-ADB funded railway project, a principal cause of current delays in construction.
When Metro Manila grew uncontrolled into Mega Manila, property development feverishly happened with little or no regard to urban planning. Cavite, all the way to Tagaytay, is fast becoming highly urbanized. So is Laguna province. Hot money in property development cannot wait for the government to tell them what they can and cannot do. As it happened in the original Manila and suburbs, it will soon be impossible to instill order once areas have been overbuilt.
A top Ayala executive once boasted to The Business Times of Singapore that Ayala had become a de facto government essentially because of the government’s lack of an urban planning agency.
“The fact that there is nobody in the Philippines who regulates urban planning has been great for Ayala Land, because we are probably the only company there that has the scale financially to take on large plots of land. By developing big tracts of land, we become the government; we control and manage everything. We are the mayors and the governors of the communities that we develop and we do not relinquish this responsibility to the government.
“We develop all the roads, water and sewer systems, and provide infrastructure for power, we manage security, we do garbage collection, we paint every pedestrian crossing and change every light bulb in the streets…”
Our government cannot default on its obligation to professionally plan and regulate development in our communities. Letting developers become de facto governments is why we are now such a mess.
Hopefully, the politics of development will stop sacrificing our quality of life. Yes, let’s build those growth centers in Clark and Quezon province. But focus on one first and complete it. Failure is defined as leaving behind two unfinished projects as a presidential term expires.
Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco
