Gov’t expects New Clark City to attract new investments

The government’s flagship metropolis project New Clark City is expected to bring in billions of pesos in new investments.

“The New Clark City will bring in several hundred enterprises and billions in new investments,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Wednesday during a press briefing in Capas, Tarlac.

The New Clark City, located within the Clark special economic zone spanning Angeles City in Pampanga and the towns of Capas and Bamban in Tarlac, is among the 75 flagship projects of the Duterte administration under the “Build, Build, Build” initiative.

“We are creating a logistics hub ... If we succeed, the experience here will be replicated in various regions and various areas,” Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said during the briefing.

The National Government Administrative Center in New Clark City will house satellite offices of all the branches of the government—executive, legislative, and judiciary—along with their attached agencies as part of the government’s plan to decongest Metro Manila.

It will house back-up facilities for all state offices to ensure operational continuity in the event of a major calamity in the Metro Manila area.

A sports complex, which will house an Aquatics and Athletics Center, is envisioned to as a world-class facility for hosting major international sports events. This will soon be the venue of the South East Asian Games to be held tentatively in November or December 2019.

The total project cost is P12.695 billion and will be financed through Public-Private Partnership or PPP.

Dominguez said New Clark City will be connected to Manila by the second stage of the Philippine National Railways North Line, and will be linked to the Subic Freeport by another high-speed rail line.

“The excellent logistics and the prospective rail link to Subic will make this area an ideal place to build manufacturing, especially food processing and other export industries,” the Finance chief said.

The Subic-Clark Railway Project is a 71-kilometer freight railway which will cover the provinces of Bataan and Pampanga and connect Subic Bay Freeport Zone and Clark Freeport Zone. It will provide a railway link between the Port of Subic Bay and the Clark International Airport.

The railway project will be financed through official development assistance from China and through budget allocation under the General Appropriations Act .

The project has a total cost of P50.03 billion, of which P40.26 billion will be shouldered by Department of Transportation while P9.77 billion will come from Bases Conversion and Development Authority.

“All the developments you see around you are part of a plan to decongest Metro Manila by interconnecting this part of the country and investing in new growth centers,” Dominguez said. —VDS, GMA News