ADB agrees $400m loan to support Philippines' capital market development
The Asian Development Bank has approved a $400 million policy-based loan to support the Philippine government’s efforts to strengthen domestic capital markets and reach its development goals of sustained economic growth and poverty reduction.
The Support to Capital Market-Generated Infrastructure Financing Program, subprogram 1, aims to address key constraints that have limited the growth of domestic capital markets, especially government and corporate bond markets.
It also focuses on building a domestic institutional investor base that will become a sustainable source of long-tenor infrastructure finance. By boosting infrastructure finance, the capital market development program will support higher public infrastructure spending for years to come, the ADB says.
The government’s flagship “Build Build Build” infrastructure development program targets an increase in public spending on infrastructure towards 7.0% of gross domestic product by 2022, up from 5.5% in 2018 and an average of 2.8% in the last three decades.
