One of the questions propounded to participants in the recent 2025 Aratubangan debate concerned the proposed Friendship Bridge that would connect Catanduanes and Camarines Sur via an eight-kilometre bridge.
As expected, nobody among the candidates attending the forum objected to the proposed project, including
Congressman Eulogio Rodriguez, who claimed to have passed a resolution calling for the conduct of a feasibility study of the project.
He may be correct as far as his own measure is concerned but it was former Governor Araceli Wong who pushed the project with the national government, most probably backed by then Congressman Cesar Sarmiento.
The study was funded with P3 million several years ago from the DPWH, which bid out the consultancy project to a private contractor. It is safe to assume that the results of the study were favorable as the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) has already approved the project for funding by interested foreign financing institutions.
The problem is where to get the several billions of pesos needed to construct the huge undertaking as the national government would have to convince prospective financiers of the need to build a dead-end bridge that would serve only one island.
For now, it seems the priority of the current administration is the bridge link between Matnog, Sorsogon, and Allen, Samar, which would cut overland travel time between the Luzon and Visayas regions especially during the typhoon season.
For both projects to be realized, perhaps the province and whoever wins its lone seat in Congress would need to package the Friendship Bridge as a component of the P9.5 billion Camarines Sur-Catanduanes Interconnection Project (CCIP) which seeks to lay a submarine power cable linking the Luzon main grid to the island grid and thus deliver cheaper and reliable power.
It may be recalled that in 2022, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has already has sought approval from the Energy Regulatory Commission of the interconnection project to support the load growth and demand of the Catanduanes Island.
Under the proposed project, NGCP will lay down submarine cables and install overhead transmission lines including the 230 kv Naga-Presentacion kV transmission line, four 69 kV transmission lines and six 69 kV substations.
According to NGCP, peak demand in Catanduanes has grown to 15 megawatts in 2020 as against supply of only 10.18 MW.
However, this initiative of the private sector (the NGCP is controlled by tycoons Henry Sy Jr. and Robert Coyiuto, Jr.) early on faced opposition from the island’s congressman.
Soon after his victory in the May 9, 2022 election, Rodriguez was quoted as saying that it was not yet the right time to pursue the grid interconnection project, the correct term for the submarine power cable project pushed by Cong. Hector Sanchez.
He did not state his reasons for not supporting the key power project.
For the Friendship Bridge and the CCIP to come to fruition, people of Catanduanes should be able to realize by now that they would have to choose someone who has the competence, connections and commitment to help realize the vital projects, either as one or individually.
And that someone is apparently not the conjugal legislative representation from Bato or the untested remnant of a long-gone dynasty but Virac Mayor Samuel Laynes, a mechanical engineering board topnotcher who has ably proven his worth in local governance with four Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) trophies to show in just six years.