FALSE: No infrastructure built under Noynoy Aquino

At a glance:

• Claim: There was no public infrastructure built during the Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III administration.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: Three public-private partnership (PPP) projects were completed before Aquino left office in June 2016. Aquino also approved at least 50 infrastructure projects and services before he stepped down.
• Why we fact-checked this: A reader emailed the claim for verification. As of writing, the posts containing this claim had 877 combined shares, over 2,698 reactions, and 184 comments.

Complete details:

A graphic comparing the accomplishments of the Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and Rodrigo Duterte administrations circulated on social media on Thursday, March 25. It falsely claimed there was no public infrastructure built under Aquino.

The graphic said the “Aquino legacy” left “no infrastructure,” while the “Duterte legacy” promises “more infrastructure” in the future. It also said that Aquino’s PPP stands for “plan, plan, plan,” meaning that there was no implementation.

“All study, drawing, and presentation did not materialize during his term,” the graphic said.

This is false. Although Aquino’s PPP program was criticized for slow implementation, there were 3 projects that were completed before his term ended in June 2016.

The PPP Center’s annual reports showed that 3 PPP projects were completed in 2015. These were the Muntinlupa-Cavite Expressway, the construction of 9,296 classrooms under Phase 1 of the School Infrastructure Project, and the automatic fare collection system, popularly known as the Beep card.

In December 2016, the second phase of the NAIA Expressway was also finished. This was about 6 months after Aquino left office, but its construction started in 2012.

The Official Gazette, the official journal of the Philippine government, also published a list in 2016 of the projects under the Aquino administration “to be completed during the next administration.” These were 50 infrastructure projects and services that were approved by Aquino.

PPP refers to the contractual agreement between the government and private firms to collaborate on building, financing, designing, implementing, and operating infrastructure facilities and services that were traditionally provided by the government. Aquino reorganized and renamed the Build-Operate and Transfer Center to the PPP Center in 2010 through Executive Order No. 8 in 2010. 

Even Duterte’s Build, Build, Build includes projects that are funded through PPP. (READ: Duterte’s team changes tune on PPPs as infra push gets reality check)

A reader emailed the claim to Rappler for verification. Claim Check, Facebook’s monitoring tool that identifies potentially dubious posts, also flagged a similar post for fact checkers to verify. As of writing, these posts had 877 combined shares, over 2,698 reactions, and 184 comments.

In 2019, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo made a similar claim that the Aquino administration had “zero accomplishment in its infrastructure program.” He eventually took it back, saying instead that the projects built under Aquino were not zero but paled in comparison to Duterte’s Build, Build, Build program. – Pauline Macaraeg/Rappler.com

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