The Philippines is significantly underinvesting in physical infrastructure, with its public sector infrastructure budget consistently below 3% of GDP. Spending on social infrastructure for education and health is also inadequate at slightly over 4% of GDP.53
Polls of businessmen repeatedly show poor infrastructure as one of the top challenges facing the Philippine economy, second only to corruption. Like corruption, poor infrastructure severely weakens economic competitiveness.
In the last two WEF Global Competitiveness Reports, among the ASEAN-6 economies, the country’s overall infrastructure quality ranked below Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand and about the same as Indonesia and Vietnam