Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Philippine delegation to the People’s Republic of China, it’s my pleasure to welcome you this morning to this open forum on DuterteNomics.

DuterteNomics is the brand we’ve given to the President’s philosophy and strategy for economic governance.

It’s a strategy that’s driven by our dream of building a nationwide infrastructure network that will connect all of our 7,000 thousand islands into one cohesive and dynamic whole, into Asia’s newest tiger economy.

Beyond our national ambitions, there are also profound implications in DuterteNomics for the Pan-Asian transportation network contemplated by the One Belt, One Road initiative.

First, the lengthy sea route that seeks to connect the North Asian coastline to the islands of Southeast Asia will benefit from a fully developed maritime hub in the Philippines, located in the former US Naval Base in Subic.

This is where we already have our biggest shipyards, as one of the world’s four largest shipbuilders. It is also where we plan to build a cargo railway that will connect Subic to the air and land transportation hub at Clark.

From Clark, we will provide road and rail access to the seaport of Manila that bypasses the crowded streets of the capital city.

The other way we will extend the connectivity of One Belt One Road is at the other end of our country to the south.

The other week, President Duterte and President Widodo of Indonesia inaugurated a weekly roll on – roll off ferry service between the Philippine cities of Davao and General Santos and the Indonesian city of Bitung.

With this new service, people and commodities being transported from Indochina down to Indonesia may be carried overnight ferry to Mindanao, the President’s home region.

From there, they can travel to the rest of the country through the new and improved land, sea, and air networks that we will build.

This project will also strengthen the sub-region of BIMP-EAGA, an important terminating point for One Belt One Road. It will improve the capacity of the four-member countries to participate in trade and investment with the rest of the region.

We in the Philippines welcome One Belt One Road as the way to realize our longstanding dream of Pan-Asian connectivity. The infrastructure we will build under DuterteNomics is our own small contribution to realizing that dream.

Thank you, good morning and mabuhay.

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