The Department of Transportation (DOTr) is eyeing to seek assistance from Japan or two other international financial institutions to bankroll three major railways project in Luzon and Mindanao.
DOTr Secretary Jaime Bautista said Japan, through its Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) are now the main options to finance the projects after the department recently dropped China as its partner.
The projects are the South Long Haul Project or the Philippine National Railway- Bicol, the Subic-Clark Railway in Luzon, and the Mindanao Railway Project.
“These three projects can either be financed by (ODA (official development assistance) or PPP (Public-Private Partnership) schemes. We’re looking at those three sources to finance these projects,” Bautista said.
The agreement that the DOTr is pushing is that it is the national government which will take charge of all the expenses for the right-of-way acquisition.
Right now, Bautista said they are consulting with the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) to update each project’s cost due to the delay of its implementation.
The three projects are under the Duterte administration but did not materialize.
Bautista said they need to be updated with the project costs due to the rising cost of materials and labor.
“We need to get first the approval (of NEDA) because there could be additional costs in the projects because of the increase in cost of materials and labor. So we need to update all of these,” said Bautista.