Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center Executive Director Andre C. Palacios will keep his post, according to National Economic and Development Authority Director General Ernesto M. Pernia.
However, Pernia is grooming another prospective appointee for the position who will be appointed, in the meantime, as deputy executive director.
“PPP Center Executive Director Andre Palacios will be retained in order not to disrupt the flow of projects. He’s doing a good job actually,” Pernia said in a news conference on Tuesday.
He said another unnamed appointee, who is a mechanical engineering graduate from the University of the Philippines and also has some foreign education, will be appointed as Palacios’s deputy.
“The idea is to keep him for a while and phase in the new guy so there would be no disruptions,” Pernia said.
The Duterte administration seeks to speed up and increase spending in infrastructure, at the rate of more than 5 percent of the GDP.
Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno said the increase in spending would be effected through the removal of some bottlenecks in procurement and disbursement, which were prevalent in the previous administration, resulting in underspending. Diokno said the Aquino administration left behind some 55 percent of the total national budget unspent for 2016.
The increase in spending will result in a bigger budget deficit, which may hit a ceiling of 2.5 percent of GDP. But economic officials said the faster spending of money is needed to address pressing issues, such as traffic congestion.