THE committees on Trade and Commerce and Ways and Means committees, both chaired by Councilor George Goking, are pursuing public-private partnerships (PPPs) on infrastructure development and facilitating the development of local PPP projects in priority sectors to prop up the economy and create more revenues.

Goking said, under a PPP scheme, the private sector can build, operate and maintain public infrastructure facilities and provide services traditionally delivered by the government.

He even expressed support for the proposal to designate pay parking areas within the City as a means to generate revenue for the city’s coffers.

“We need to focus on revenue-generating programs and use Public-Private Partnerships to finance government projects,” he said.

In an earlier year-end report by the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), Goking said that aside from focusing on PPPs, like the national government, the Marcos government will also undertake the programmatic Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) appraisal and programming of major national projects this year.

NEDA plans to steer the implementation of the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2023-2028, pursue its advocacy, and monitor the progress of plan implementation vis-à-vis targets.

For his part, Councilor Malvern Esparcia said that the business establishment must have parking spaces like hospitals having emergencies in saving lives.

Goking said the city should not grill the business sector, adding that more studies are needed to protect customers from the hassle of looking for parking spaces.

It can be recalled that parking space at present is a big problem.

At the meeting of the committee, the representative of the Roads and Traffic Administration said strict implementation of the Building Code is much needed.

Meanwhile, Councilor Aga Suan suggested that the city find a huge space just for the parking structure and it might be a multi-story parking space, even as he reminded the committee of possible negative reactions from the public to a pay parking space.

Councilor Ivy Emano, for her part, suggested a vertical parking space to alleviate the traffic problem.

The committee will soon review the city’s existing traffic and parking ordinances, according to Goking.