Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime Bautista on Tuesday, Jan. 7, revealed that Marcos administration currently has 16 flagship infrastructure projects in the pipeline that need to be implemented soon.
President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. presides over the 18th Cabinet meeting, the first for the year 2025, at the Malacañan Palace on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (PPA Pool)
During a Palace press briefing after President Marcos led the first full Cabinet meeting for 2025, the DOTr chief said they needed to discuss with the Chief Executive not only the current projects but also the issues, concerns, and other plans for the projects to move forward.
“As mentioned earlier by Executive Secretary (Lucas Bersamin), we had a very fruitful discussions of issues ‘no especially on flagship infrastructure projects of the Department of Transportation. We talked about, I think around 15 or 16 infrastructure flagship projects,” he said.
The DOTr, he noted, is currently handling “around 69 infrastructure flagship projects out of 186” that were approved by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Board, headed by the President.
“And, out of these 69, there are major projects that need to be implemented as soon as possible,” Bautista stressed.
He shared that among the major projects needing implementation immediately are the North-South Commuter Railway, the Metro Manila Subway Project, Metro Rail Transit (MRT) Line 4, MRT Line 7, Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 1 Extension, the New Cebu International Container Port, Philippine National Railways (PNR) South Long Haul, Mindanao Railway, and the New Dumaguete Airport Development.
The DOTr chief put particular stress, however, on the Marcos administration’s focus on rail projects, like the North-South Commuter Railway.
The railway is a 147-kilometer railway system that spans from Clark Airport to Calamba, Laguna.
“It started during the previous administration, we are now working to complete this so that we can have a partial operations by end of 2028,” the DOTr secretary noted.
While he admitted that there were “some reductions in our budget,” Bautista expressed confidence that “we should be able to fund these from the loan proceeds.”
“We’re happy that the government’s share of most of our infrastructure projects were not reduced so we will continue to implement these programs,” he added.
He explained that the budget reductions only affected the foreign-assisted projects, but the official explained that the DOTr can still avail of the loans to fund major projects like the Metro Manila Subway and the North-South Commuter Railway.