THE United States’ foreign assistance agency Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) announced that they had initiated talks with Philippine officials for the threshold program.

According to MCC Chief Executive Officer Alice Albright, she met with Department of Finance (DOF) Secretary Ralph Recto last Feb. 1.

This is more than a month after the MCC had chosen the Philippines as an eligible country for the threshold program.

“So we spent the time with Secretary Recto and his colleagues really talking through the process and what the next steps are and how we get started. And in part, we'll start working with the government on some diagnostic work to figure out what some of the key challenges might be,” Albright said.

Meanwhile, Albright said that based on the initial meeting with the DOF, it would help both parties to identify the programs in the Philippines.

The MCC is a bilateral United States foreign aid agency established by the U.S. Congress in 2004. 

“The first step will be for the government to appoint what we call a national coordinator, which is the main counterparty that we will work with. But we can work as quickly as the government is able to work going forward, and we expect we've had some very good initial conversations, and we expect things to unfold very very quickly,” Albright said.