{"id":10352,"date":"2020-10-11T13:01:46","date_gmt":"2020-10-11T05:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/?p=10352"},"modified":"2020-11-24T15:42:56","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T07:42:56","slug":"four-reasons-why-the-kaliwa-dam-project-loan-is-onerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/four-reasons-why-the-kaliwa-dam-project-loan-is-onerous\/","title":{"rendered":"Four reasons why the Kaliwa Dam Project loan is onerous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The loan agreement for the New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Low\nDam Project (NCWS-Kaliwa Low Dam) is onerous and should be cancelled. President\nDuterte has reportedly ordered a review of loan agreements to determine if any\nare onerous and disadvantageous to the Filipino people. Yet the Kaliwa Dam\nproject which has come under fire for its unfavorable Chinese loan agreement\nhas already started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Php10.2 billion (US$211.2 million) loan agreement financing\nmost of the Php12.2 billion NCWS-Kaliwa Low Dam has the following questionable\nprovisions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>1. Costly to pay. <\/strong>The\ncommercial loan agreement has a 2% annual interest rate, commitment fee of 0.3%\nannually, management fee of US$633,600, and a 20-year maturity with a 7-year\ngrace period. The nominal interest rate is higher than other recent loan\nagreements with Japan or Korea which range from 0.08-0.26 percent. The loan is\nalso not necessarily the cheapest loan even if US dollar equivalent interest\nrates are used. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>2. Project is exclusive to Chinese\ncontractors. <\/strong>While a Philippine project,only\nChinese contractors are qualified to bid and Philippine corporations were\nexcluded from the process. The China Energy Engineering Company, Inc. (CEEC)\nbagged the project. <a>The contract is between the <\/a>Metropolitan\nWaterworks Sewerage System (MWSS) and Chinese corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>3. Loan agreement is biased for\nChinese laws. <\/strong>Article 8.4 of the loan agreement\nstipulates that Chinese Law will govern disputes pertaining to the agreement.\nMeanwhile, Article 8.5 says that disputes will be dealt with under the auspices\nof the Hong Kong International Arbitration Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>4. Philippine patrimonial assets and property may be compromised in case of default on the loan. <\/strong>In the Article 8.1 Waiver of Immunity, the country \u201cwaives any immunity on the grounds of sovereignty or otherwise for itself or its property in connection with any arbitration proceeding\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The loan agreement is financially disadvantageous, tied to Chinese contractors, and an affront to Philippine sovereignty. These issues are also on top of other issues raised by the Dumagats and Remontados, farmers and community folk, environmentalists, engineers, hydrologists, scientists, public servants, consumers, and many more. The dams projects will displace communities, inundate ancestral lands, and destroy the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Philippine government should not enter into loan agreements having such terms whether with China or any other sources of official development assistance (ODA). The Filipino people bear the burden of paying these onerous loans. This is even getting worse under the Duterte administration which is imposing new and higher consumption taxes while lowering taxes on the rich and on corporations.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Features | President Duterte has reportedly ordered a review of loan agreements to determine if any are onerous and disadvantageous to the Filipino people. Yet the Kaliwa Dam project which has come under fire for its unfavorable Chinese loan agreement has already started.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,3],"tags":[432,1169,347,144,910,1691,735,1043,1567,223],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10355,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10352\/revisions\/10355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}