Budapest, Hungary (Sept. 22) – Fifteen months after he shared his deep concern on the environmental degradation of the country’s biggest lake, President Rody Duterte’s dream to bring back Laguna Lake to its former beauty and cleanness is slowly taking place.
Yesterday, here in Budapest, officials of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) and the Laguna Lake Development Authority engaged Hungarian officials in three hectic meetings to discuss an earlier offer by the Eastern European nation to extend an EU510-M loan facility to finance development projects in the Philippines, especially the clean-up of rivers and lakes in the Philippines.
The meetings were a follow through of an earlier engagement I had with Hungary Foreign Minister Peter Sjjarto in May this year where he said the Eximbank of Hungary has an EU510-M loan facility for the Philippines as his country starts what it calls the “Asian Shift.”
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano both urged the DAF to make a follow through on the offer.
István Joó, Ministerial Commissioner for Water Diplomacy, Export and the Danube Region Strategy, met with the Philippine delegation yesterday and confirmed his country’s interest in supporting the clean-up of Laguna Lake.
Minister Joò was designated by Minister Sjjarto, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, to lead the panel which would conduct the initial arrangements for the planned funding to move forward.
The meeting with the Commission for Water Diplomacy followed an earlier conference with top officials of the Eximbank of Hungary led by Deputy Chief Executive Officer Andraś Puskaś in the headquarters of the bank in downtown Budapest.
Puskas said that the Eximbank of Hungary is ready to work on the loan facility as soon as the Hungarian and Philippine Governments have finalised the agreement.
The Laguna Lake clean up is proposed to be a government-to-government engagement which will involve the clean-up of the lake by establishing water treatment facilities to ensure that the effluence being thrown into the lake by over 10,000 facilities are cleaned.
With an estimated 16-M people living around the lake, the wastes and garbage being thrown could turn the country’s biggest lake into a gigantic septic tank in the future.
As of today, Laguna Lake’s production of fish for Metro Manila estimated at 150,000 metric tons every year or 40% of the fish requirements of Metro Manila is being threatened by pollution and siltation.
The funding for the Philippine Tire Factory will be a private engagement with Dennis Uy of Udenna Holdings partnering with the Philippine Rubber Farmers Association (PRFA) to undertake the establishment of the factory which aims to use raw rubber materials from the Southern Philippines for the production of an estimated 4 to 6 million tires every year.
The Philippine delegation then travelled to the headquarters of Hidrofilt Ltd. Hungary’s second biggest Water Services and Waste Water Treatment company and met with its head György Papòcsi who said that his company along with other leading Hungary water treatment and water management groups was willing to form a consortium to undertake a study of the proposed Laguna Lake clean-up.
Yesterday, it was agreed that both countries have to move fast to ensure that everything is finalised and that the project will be started before the end of the term of President Duterte.
Upon my return to the Philippines on Monday, I will submit a report on the results of the engagements to President Duterte through Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea.
With my task done, Sec. Dominguez and Sec. Cayetano will now take over and finalise the negotiations for the loan facility.
(Photos show the Philippine delegation, including LLDA General Manager Jaime Medina engaging officials of the Commission on Water Diplomacy led by Minister Istvan Joò, Hungary Eximbank Deputy CEO Andras Puskas and HydroFilt CEO Gyorgy Pasocsi. Photos by Mayette Tudlas)
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