MANILA: The World Bank has extended its delayed $300 million Philippines Seismic Risk Reduction and Resilience Project from December 2026 to May 2028. The programme is meant to protect Metro Manila against a major earthquake - the long-feared "Big One" - and the extension reflects slow implementation of capital-region retrofit works.
The episode illustrates a recurring theme in this week's pages: the gap between committed resilience finance and delivered resilience works. Manila's retrofit backlog mirrors, in seismic form, the heat-adaptation shortfall European cities displayed this summer.
Manila Bulletin, Oct 3
