The Impact of Infrastructure ODA Loans on Poverty Alleviation and Employment in the Philippines

Abstract

The Official Development Assistance (ODA) fund is a funding source heavily used by the Philippine government for the construction of infrastructures in the Philippines. For an economy to have long-term effects on its people, infrastructures play a central role to ensure this. The Philippines has made extended efforts to assuage poverty and find means to increase employment through ODA funded infrastructures. This research acquired data from the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) and Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to know the outcome of the impact of infrastructure ODA loans on poverty alleviation and employment. Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) was employed to estimate the relationship among the variables. Based on the estimation results, only a few sectors of the infrastructure ODA loans have a significant relationship with poverty alleviation, namely energy, power and electrification, urban infrastructures, and rural infrastructures. The rest not mentioned exhibited an insignificant relationship with poverty. Likewise, can be said about its impact on employment. Only transportation infrastructures are seen to have a significant impact on employment. Those infrastructure sectors not mentioned have an insignificant impact on employment.