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By APD writer Melo M. Acuña
**MANILA, Dec. 30 (APD ) – **Chinese Ambassador to Manila Huang Xilian committed to institutionalize the conduct of regular meetings between the Philippines and China to thresh out issues involving the Duterte government’s big-ticket infrastructure and development projects that are up for implementation with funding support from China.
In a statement released today by the Department of Finance, Ambassador Huang made the commitment in response to the proposal made by Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III to hold regular dialogues between high-level officials of the Philippines and China to address the current problems.
During his courtesy call on Secretary Dominguez, China’s new ambassador reiterated China’s commitment to further enhance its bilateral relations with the Philippines and increase cultural and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.
“It would be very helpful of we have regular meetings regarding these projects. Our suggestion has always been to meet once every three to four months,” Secretary Dominguez said.
Ambassador Huang reportedly agreed and promised to “work very hard” to ensure that projects under the “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure modernization program would be “launched as soon as possible.”
“We will try to make these regular meetings happen as soon as possible. My suggestion is we need to institutionalize that kind of mechanism. Every three months to take place, every quarter,” Ambassador Huang said.
He added that when he was assigned several years ago to Pakistan, he made a similar suggestion to hold periodic meetings every two months between top officials of their countries to cement their bilateral relations.
According to the Chinese ambassador, he was informed by his staff at the Chinese Embassy that 10 projects in the Philippines are “being completed” in cooperation with China.
“We hope all these projects will bring real tangible benefits to our peoples,” he said.
During the meeting, Ambassador Huang cited the key role played by Secretary Dominguez in promoting understanding between the Philippines and China and described the Finance Secretary as among the “major architects of cooperation” between the two countries.
Secretary Dominguez said he is only a member of the economic team with President Duterte at the helm that moved towards improving the Philippines’ relations with China over the past three years.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
