Economics
Duterte’s $180 Billion Building Boom May Be Expats’ Ticket Home
- Competition for skilled workers boosts wages in tight market
- Private projects face slowdown, pushing up housing costs
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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s plan to supercharge growth with a $180 billion infrastructure program is running into a roadblock: a lot of the people he needs to build all the roads, bridges, airports and railways are working abroad.
For decades, the Philippines has relied on money sent home from an army of nannies, maids, mariners, nurses and construction workers who can sometimes earn salaries of more than four times higher abroad. With Duterte raising billions of dollars in debt and taxes to upgrade the nation’s creaky transport network -- ranked worse than that of Sri Lanka and Vietnam by the World Economic Forum -- the loss of skilled personnel is causing a labor crunch that is pushing up wages and home prices.