Spanish infrastructure company Acciona S.A. is exploring opportunities in building desalination plants in the Philippines amid the need to increase water supply, its director said.
“We are analyzing opportunities to see and definitely we are open [to] plans to build desalination plants in the Philippines. We have good partnerships,” Rubén Camba, Acciona’s director of infrastructure in Southeast Asia, told BusinessWorld on the sidelines of a project launch last week.
“We are open to explore — definitely — options,” he said.
According to Mr. Camba, the water supply in the Philippines has “room for improvement because the population has [been] growing. There will be more water demand.”
He is hopeful to see the construction of more dams and water treatment plants that will supply enough water to meet increasing demand.
“Apart from dams, apart from water treatment plants in the future, we foresee the need for desalination plants. That’s something we [have] seen to be useful in the Philippines because it’s an archipelago surrounded by sea,” he said.
At present, the company has been awarded three water projects in the Philippines. These are the Putatan 2 water treatment plant in Muntinlupa, which was turned over to Maynilad Water Services, Inc. in 2020, and the Laguna Lake water treatment plant, which it built as part of a consortium with a capacity of 15,000 cubic meters per day.
In July, Acciona was tapped by Manila Water Co., Inc. to build the second phase of its East Bay 2 drinking water treatment plant in a consortium with Prime Metro BMD Corp. and Santa Clara International.
Last week, the company, through its corporate foundation, launched the expansion of its “Light at Home” project, which will install 1,200 solar systems in Brgy. Teneguiban, an off-grid coastal village in El Nido, Palawan.
The project is in partnership with the Ayala Foundation and financial assistance from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation of about €569,657 or P34 million.
The initiative is also in collaboration with companies Ten Knots Philippines and AirSWIFT. — Sheldeen Joy Talavera