The National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), after a recent meeting with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), reported the bank’s lending and technical assistance program for the next three years totaled $1.87 billion.
 Neda and ADB reiterate the importance of ensuring the quality of projects at proposal, implementation and operating stages.
“We support this program as government can fully utilize it through quality imple-mentation, supervision, monitoring and evaluation of projects by different agencies. One of the ways by which we can ensure the success of the assistance program laid out before us is guaranteeing the quality at entry and exit of the projects that we will handle,” Neda Deputy Director-General Rolando Tungpalan said.
 The meeting on ADB’s Country Programming Mission 2013-2015 showed the bank’s Country Operations Business Plan for for those years is broken down into $600 million for 2013, $700 million for 2014, and $570 million for 2015.
 The lending program covers projects in the following areas: public sector management, with a $750-million share (44 percent), multisector which includes disaster risk financing and social protection projects with a $470-million share (27 percent), education with a $300-million share (17 percent), and transportation with a $200-million share (12 percent).
“We are glad the ADB lending program responds to our needs and priorities as laid out in our Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for 2011-2016,” the Neda Official said.
 The program also involves a $325-million co-financing from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Infrastructure Fund launched during the ADB’s 45th Annual Governors’ Meeting in Manila.
The fund will support projects on water supply, transportation and road improvements for three years.
Meanwhile, officials from the ADB said lessons from the country portfolio review were systematically incorporated in the formulation of the three-year business plan.
“Given the kind of partnership and mutual accountability that ADB and the Philippines have, we are happy that we have been able to apply the lessons from our involvement in ADB programs in the past to the way we currently do our government processes,” Tungpalan said.
The meeting was led by Tungpalan and ADB Philippines country director Neeraj Jain.