DoTr’s rail sentinel vows speed, comfort

The designated railway overseer of the Department of Transportation since the term of Secretary Art Tugade has a pivotal role in the expansion of the train system, which promises to improve the speed and comfort of travel.

Transportation Undersecretary Timothy “TJ” Batan’s current pursuit is pushing the North-South Commuter Railway System (NSCR) closer to fruition, which aims to connect northern and southern Luzon through a rail system.

The NSCR seeks to reduce travel time from Clark International Airport in Pampanga to Calamba in Laguna to less than three hours, down from the current four hours of land travel.

The 35-station rail system is expected to generate 350,000 jobs during construction and operations, while serving 750,000 passengers daily at full operations.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has directed the Department of Transportation (DoTr) to seek assistance from other countries and experienced rail companies for the operations and management of the NSCR system.

Batan was elated over the high turnout of participants during the fourth and final leg of the NSCR market sounding in Japan, which includes 28 Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Tokyo Metro, Sumitomo Corp., Alstom Japan, among others.

“We’re very happy to see the attendance in this fourth leg for our O&M roadshow. It only goes to show that we are on the right direction in terms of structuring and developing this O&M concession,” Undersecretary Batan said Monday.

“Parties will only attend and continue participating if they see that it’s a good project being put out together,” he added.

Batan believes that mass rail systems are transformational and provide beneficial solutions to urban traffic congestion that takes up so much of the commuters’ time.

“What we are working on is something that will change the lives of Filipinos, and as our very new Secretary has said, the goal is simple: it’s simply to give back time. This is the time that has been taken from millions of commuters in this country for several decades,” Batan said.

The railway buildup is on track, barring moves that will give less importance to the projects.

Budget puzzle

Batan was among the first to acknowledge the problem of flagship projects relegated to unprogrammed appropriations (UA).

About 10 projects of the DoTr were placed then under the UA in last year’s budget which are the Metro Manila Subway Project, the North–South Commuter Railway, the LRT-1 Cavite Extension, the MRT-4, and the South Long Haul Project.

Projects in the road sector, such as the Davao Bus Project, the Cebu BRT, and the EDSA Greenways, and aviation sector projects, and in the maritime sector, like the New Cebu International Container Port, were also placed in the UA.

The total allocation under Unprogrammed Appropriations for foreign-assisted projects reached P178 billion then.

Batan said the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) issues a Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) to allow counterpart financing that is needed to unlock foreign-assisted projects under the UA.

A project is placed under UA when there is no longer space in the Programmed Appropriations section of the budget, Batan explained.

“If it’s a foreign-assisted project, it means you already have a loan, for example, from JICA (Japan), or from the Asian Development Bank or the World Bank. These SAROs give us the ability to use the proceeds from those loans. That’s one of the criteria, as we understand, used by DBM to put a project under Unprogrammed instead of Programmed Appropriations,” averred the DoTr official.

Batan said for DoTr, implementing the projects placed in the UA would mean a longer process.

“If you’re under Unprogrammed Appropriations, there’s an additional step before we can pay what needs to be paid using the loan proceeds,” he said.

Under Programmed Appropriations, funds can be released right away and the agency can directly pay a contractor using loan proceeds.

But if it’s under UA, there’s an extra step: before contractors can be paid, a SARO is needed “to be able to use our borrowed money.”

“That’s the difference — it adds another layer before the loan proceeds can be used to pay contractors,” according to Batan.

Following the directive of the President, we need to Build Better More, he said. The projects under UA already have loans from development partners like Japan International Cooperation, Asian Development Bank, World Bank, as well as partners from France.

Ever the optimist, Batan quips the good thing is the funds are already there, and used to continue the construction of many transport projects.