Quezon City---The Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA) will once again seek the help of the Congress for a legislated increase in its authorized capitalization and borrowing capacities to ensure funding for various water supply improvement and expansion projects especially in the small, developing provincial areas.

LWUA Administrator Orlando C. Hondrade said that there is an urgent need to raise additional funds for between 2008 and 2010, LWUA plans to invest an additional P5.436 Billion towards the completion of an additional 250 water infrastructure projects to serve an additional 307,600 households or an additional 1.538 million people in 250 provincial areas to include waterless communities covered by water districts.

Hondrade said LWUA's original capitalization of P2.5 billion and domestic as well foreign borrowing capacities of P1 billion and $500 million, respectively, set under PD 198 as amended, in 1973 yet, have long been exhausted in water supply development projects in the previous years . He said the agency is making do with internally generated cash and some local borrowings for its current projects but these would not be enough in the long run considering the increasing costs of developing water systems.

He said that bilateral and multilateral funding institutions as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the USAID and Germany's KfW have sounded off LWUA that they would be ready to provide loans on condition that LWUA would raise the needed local counterparts. LWUA would only be able to do that if given additional capitalization and increase in limits of domestic as well as foreign borrowing . In the last Congress, LWUA asked for increases in its capitalization to P50 billion and foreign as well as domestic borrowings to ensure funding for provincial water projects in the next 30 years at least. The house bill sponsored by Rep. Eric Singson was passed unanimously but the senate counterpart bill sponsored by then Sen. Magsaysay fell through in the final session.

In the next three years, LWUA plans to complete 61 water supply projects in 2008; 54 projects in 2009 and another 54 projects in 2010 that will also include projects for waterless communities covered by water districts in coordination with other government agencies as the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC). By year 2010, the total cumulative population served under the LWUA-water district jurisdiction is estimated to increase to 15.3 million.

"The Arroyo administration is determined to leave a lasting legacy to the Filipino people in the vital aspect of potable water supply which is an important pre-requisite in the socio-economic development of the nation. In response, LWUA has set its objectives and directions towards the fulfillment of this lofty goal", Hondrade said. " We are looking forward to the support of the leadership and members of both chambers of the national legislature to help us attain these objectives".
c August 21 , 2007