It will continue the support for the Metro Manila Subway Project, as the first tranche amounting to 105 billion yen , signed in March 2018, is almost fully utilized.It brought the total JICA ODA loan to 848 billion yen in support of the country’s railways network, which suffered many decades of underinvestment and delayed project implementation, and which has been aggressively catching up under the Duterte administration’s “Build, Build, Build” program.
The proposal for a subway in Metro Manila was first developed in 1973 under the Urban Transport Study in Manila Metropolitan Area. When Tugade took the helm of DOTr in July 2016, the MMSP did not have a completed feasibility study, did not have NEDA board investment approval, did not have any financing and did not have a single awarded contract.
Four other contracts were awarded for civil works of the partial operability section, 240 train cars and electromechanical systems. Three additional civil works contracts are scheduled to be awarded within the first half of this year. The 33-kilometer subway, dubbed as the “project of the century” stretches from Valenzuela in the north to NAIA Terminal Terminal 3 and FTI in the south.