The Department of Transportation said Thursday it signed three transaction advisory service agreements with the Asian Development Bank to expedite the privatization of the operations and maintenance of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and development of two major railway projects.
Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said the three agreements with ADB would allow the agency to fast track the completion of ongoing big- ticket rail projects and the much-needed improvement in the main gateway.
“By extending ADB’s advisory services on Metro Manila Subway Project and the North South Commuter Railway, we can fine-tune the selection process for the most qualified and experienced private sector operators for these rail projects once completed,” Bautista said.
He said the government was looking forward to ADB’s advice on how best to proceed in modernizing and expanding NAIA whose operations and maintenance the government wanted to privatize.
Bautista said the transport infrastructure projects are critical in accelerating the country’s economic rebound. “As President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. earlier said, our impressive economic performance clearly elevates us among the upper middle-income countries,” he said.
“It is our job at the Department of Transportation to provide impetus to that economic momentum. Our confidence of succeeding is partly knowing we have a reliable partner in ADB,” Bautista said.
The NAIA rehabilitation and development project aims to alleviate the worsening air traffic congestion at the main gateway and resolve capacity constraints by reconfiguring and renovating facilities and enhancing operation and maintenance.
The rehabilitation project aims to broaden NAIA’s role as a key economic and tourism driver for Metro Manila and the whole Philippines, deliver capital infrastructure investment to improve the airport’s efficiency and increase its capacity to meet the growing passenger demand from the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region.
The P488.5-billion MMSP, meanwhile, is a 33-kilometer subway, dubbed as the “project of the century”. It would run from Valenzuela City to NAIA Terminal 3 and FTI in Paranaque City.
The project is expected to reduce travel time between Quezon City and NAIA from one hour and 30 minutes to 35 minutes. It is expected to serve around 370,000 passengers a day in its first year of full operations, with capacity to serve up to 1 million passengers a day in later years.
It is physically interconnected and interoperable with the North-South Commuter Railway System’s south segment, enabling a passenger to board a subway train at North Ave. Station of MMSP and get off at the Calamba Station of NSCR.
