2010-2015 Sona promises: Kept/Not yet kept (Part 1)

Big victories and unresolved issues marked the transportation scene under the tenure of President Aquino. The MRT 3 continues to draw the most flak. Its problems culminated in an accident in August 2014 when a train derailed in an incident that injured dozens and raised questions over its safety.

DOING BUSINESS

By Amy R. Remo

The Aquino administration seems to have made good on its promise to streamline registration processes as part of its efforts to ease doing business in the country and boost its position as a more attractive investment destination in the region.

When President Aquino made this commitment in 2010, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) launched in October that year the electronic business name registration system (EBNRS), one of the agency’s “antired tape initiatives in line with the government’s policy of streamlining the bureaucratic processes and curbing corruption in the frontline agencies.”

The application for a business name through the EBNRS takes only 15 minutes and requires a one-page application form and one signature compared. This has drastically improved the process by cutting the length of time, the number of documents and signatures required to register a business name.

With the EBNRS in place, entrepreneurs can get their DTI business name registration certificate in less than 30 minutes.

One-stop shop

But the registration of business name with the DTI is only the first step for an entrepreneur to start a business. Other regulatory agencies and local government units (LGUs) require businesses to register so these can be issued permits and licenses to operate.

In January 2012, the DTI initiated the Philippine Business Registry (PBR) to link the EBNRS with the registration processes of other line agencies, such as the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Social Security System (SSS), Home Mutual Development Fund, Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and local governments to provide seamless transactions for entrepreneurs.

The PBR served as a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs who need to transact with several agencies to be able to start operating a business and get all the necessary permits in 30 minutes.

In 2012, the DTI implemented an electronic payment (e-payment) scheme for business name registration, as it moved to further ease the processes involved in doing business in the country.

The establishment of an e-payment scheme was done in partnership with BancNet, Development Bank of the Philippines, Globe Xchange Inc. and Land Bank of the Philippines.

Simplifying the process

In April, 12 government agencies unveiled reforms simplifying the process of starting a business to six steps and eight days, down from the previous setup requiring 16 steps and 34 days.

2 problem areas

These reforms will primarily address one of the two main problem areas, namely starting a business, as identified in many global competitiveness reports, such as the Ease of Doing Business Report by the World Bank-International Finance Corp.

The package of reforms, aimed at streamlining processes involved in starting a business, included the following:

— Merging several steps together to create single-window applications powered by more interconnectivity across IT systems of different agencies;

— Removing several outdated procedures; and

— Introducing enhanced one-stop-shop procedures in local government units.

These changes involved coordination and partnership across numerous government agencies.

The net effect is that the time it will take to incorporate new corporations, partnerships and nonstock corporations at the SEC will be reduced from 16 steps and 34 days to only six steps and eight days.

Initial roll-out of the reforms began at the SEC’s Manila office starting April, where most companies are incorporated. Roll-outs would continue throughout the year across all SEC offices and a full online system will be made available next year.

Starting business

Guillermo M. Luz, cochair for the private sector of the National Competitiveness Council, noted that most improvements in streamlining business processes were in starting businesses.

“For years, we struggled in the Ease of Doing Business Report published by the International Finance Corp. and World Bank. This is a measure of the ease or difficulty of going through 10 standard business-related processes with government—basically licenses and permits at the national and local level,” Luz said in an e-mailed statement.

“Just a few years ago, we ranked No. 148 in the world, a dismal record considering that only 189 economies were on the list. Since we started our Gameplan series in 2013, we have been able to get more agencies involved and committed to working together to streamline processes and make them more business-friendly,” he added.

Luz said among the most dramatic of improvements had been in starting a business (or incorporating).

While registration for single proprietorships has been vastly improved through the Philippine Business Registry, incorporating continues to be a tedious process which discouraged investors, he said.

“This process took a minimum of 16 steps and 34 days. Now, thanks to an integrated system put together by the SEC, BIR, SSS, Pag-Ibig and PhilHealth, the process at the SEC now takes one day for about 80 percent of applicants.

“By linking up to the local government units, we hope to also streamline the process and complete incorporation within six to eight days. Through full automation (it is partially automated today), we hope to take the process completely online next year and reduce the steps and time further,” Luz added.

AGRICULTURE

By Ronnel W. Domingo

In the last year of the Aquino administration, agriculture officials have yet to achieve self-sufficiency in staple food supply.

President Aquino announced in 2011 the campaign to attain sufficiency in rice production, mainly driven by the wish to end excessive importation of milled rice and its allegedly attendant corruption.

The President said “over-importation that only serves to benefit the selfish few” must end by the end of 2013, mainly by ensuring that “the rice served on every Filipino’s dinner table is planted here, harvested here and purchased here.”

In 2012, he said the annual production shortfall of 1.3 million tons of rice, which the country endured in the years of the Arroyo administration, had been slashed by a third to 860,000 tons in the first year of the Aquino administration.

The effort was going so good that, by the second year, the domestic shortfall was further reduced to 500,000 tons.

Back then, Aquino said the country would attain self-sufficiency in rice and might even be able to export grains, “if the weather cooperated.”

Typhoons

But the weather did not cooperate, with strong typhoons devastating crops and damaging irrigation facilities. One culprit in particular was Typhoon “Santi,” which ravaged the grains-producing Central Luzon in October 2013.

As the self-imposed deadline came, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala admitted that local farms were producing only 97 percent to 98 percent of the country’s requirements.

After another year and a half, Assistant Secretary Edilberto de Luna said rice self-sufficiency was pegged at 96 percent. “That is the figure when the basis is local production and utilization,” said De Luna, who also serves as director of government’s national rice and corn program.

“But the figure would be lower if you use the Food and Agriculture Organization’s formula, which basically says the more you import, the less you are self-sufficient,” he added.

Food security office

The National Food Administration (NFA) has dropped its policy of minimal importation since it has been placed under the authority of the presidential assistant on food security and farm modernization, an office created in 2014 and headed by former Sen. Francis Pangilinan.

In 2014, the NFA shipped in a total of 1.3 million tons. So far this year, the agency has contracted foreign suppliers for shipments totaling 750,000 tons.

“While [the Department of Agriculture] admits that we have not yet reached the sufficiency level that we all wanted, we believe that we are indeed on the right track, having attained historical high rice harvest every year,” De Luna said.

“We are assured of the continuous cooperation of the Filipino rice farmers who have been working with us (and trusting the government rice program, more importantly) in the challenges of not just improving yields but in increasing their incomes,” he added.

De Luna said that with annual palay production jumping 20 percent over the past four years from 15.77 million tons in 2010 to 18.97 million tons in 2014, “what came to us during the administration of President Aquino was also one for the books.”

As for irrigation services, authority over the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) has also been transferred to Pangilinan’s office.

Iloilo dam

One of the President’s promises in 2013 was the implementation of the second phase of the Jalaur River Multipurpose Project (JRMP 2) in Iloilo. Two years later, the NIA is still doing consultations for the P11.2-billion project, for which the agency has yet to secure the required consent from affected indigenous peoples.

JRMP 2 is touted as the first large-scale reservoir dam outside Luzon, intended to provide year-round irrigation to 31,840 hectares of rice farms, 6.6 megawatts of hydroelectric power and bulk water for the needs of Iloilo.

Coconut infestation

Also in 2013, the President talked about increasing the area of coconut farms intercropped with other cash-earners like vegetables and coffee. But the government’s efforts to revive the domestic coconut industry had to hurdle the devastation of Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” which felled or rendered unproductive millions of trees.

There was also the infestation of the coconut scale insect, which ravaged 1.2 million trees in the Calabarzon as well as certain parts of Basilan province.

Even then, efforts to help coconut farmers tap new revenue streams have gained support from the private sector.

Coffee growing

Last year, Nestlé Philippines Inc. (NPI) signed up to take part in the drive of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) to promote coffee growing as an additional source of income for coconut farmers.

NPI is helping in PCA’s Coconut-Coffee-Based Enterprise Development (Cocobed) project, which involves the provision of high-grade planting materials for coffee farming in feasible regions as an intercrop for coconut. The project kicked off with coffee-planting rites in the provinces of Zamboanga Sibugay and Zambaoanga del Sur.

The government has also stepped up projects to provide farmers with modern equipment, enhanced irrigation systems, more farm-to-market roads and training programs.

According to the NIA, as of December 2014, it had brought irrigation services for the first time to 12,974 ha of farms, or 57 percent of the target 22,614 ha.

The agency also restored services to 3,707 ha of farms, 84 percent of the 4,406-ha target.

Farm-to-market roads

As for farm modernization, which the President mentioned last year, the agriculture department has lined up P9.7 billion worth of farm-to-market roads under the World Bank-backed Philippine Rural Development Project (PDRP), which the multilateral lender approved in August 2014.

The roads represent 1,121 kilometers that were among 195 subprojects that various local government units have proposed to be included in the P27.5-billion PDRP’s infrastructure development component.

In terms of farm machines, De Luna said that from 2011 to 2014, the Department of Agriculture provided 21,943 units of production equipment, such as tractors, transplanters and tillers worth P2.38 billion to 13,746 farmers’ groups.

There were also 32,393 post-harvest equipment like harvesters, threshers and reapers worth P1.44 billion provided to 6,193 farmers’ groups and 5,770 post-production facilities worth P6.6 billion given to 5,770 farmers’ groups.

Rice hoarders

Last year, the President lashed out at “greedy rice hoarders [who were] stockpiling their supplies in order to sell them when prices eventually rise.”

Following that, the NFA cracked the whip by making surprise inspections of warehouses in coordination with the Philippine National Police.

But the effort hit a snag when one trader, whose warehouse was shuttered following an NFA-PNP raid, accused NFA officials of extorting from him millions of pesos to allow him to reopen his business.

In a sworn statement submitted to the National Bureau of Investigation in August 2014, businessman Jomerito Soliman said then NFA Administrator Arthur Juan had told him that P5 million each was meant for Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Secretary Pangilinan, and another P5 million for Juan himself.

All three officials were present during the raid. According to the NFA, the warehouse was shuttered because animal feeds were being mixed with imported Thai rice in the warehouse with the intention of passing off the mixture “sinandomeng” rice for sale to the public.

Juan resigned in September 2014, citing health problems as the reason for his stepping down.

ENERGY

By Riza T. Olchondra

When President Aquino delivers his final State of the Nation Address (Sona), those most concerned about electricity need only to refer to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) accomplishments.

The DOE officer in charge, Zenaida Y. Monsada, said 102 power generation projects had been commissioned and committed (work ongoing) under the administration, with a total capacity of 6,549.45 megawatts.

That is a big leap from the nine power projects (with total capacity of 1,338 MW) credited under the previous administration.

Whether a supply of 6,549 MW is enough may not be as much a source of concern as whether the volume is sufficient to prevent outages in the future.

In Aquino’s 2014 Sona, he gave no indication that he would declare a state of power emergency to gain special powers to avert a supply shortage last summer. It turned out he did not have to.

The President said he ordered then Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla to coordinate with stakeholders to address the tightness in supply that raised the possibility of outages.

Petilla projected a reserve shortfall of about 200 MW in Luzon from March to May this year. He said a buffer of 400 MW to 500 MW was needed.

The President blamed the shortage on legacy power plants that may experience unexpected outages due to old age, regular maintenance shutdowns and delay in the construction of new ones. The El Niño phenomenon was also a threat to hydropower plants.

Luzon did not experience widespread brownouts over the summer. While a number of tight-supply situations are expected to occur over the second half of this year, the DOE has assured that new power plants are opening.

Backup measure

There is also a back-up measure in the form of the interruptible load program (ILP) in which businesses with generator sets may generate power to ease demand from the grid in exchange for compensation.

So far, so good, it seems.

Petilla, who recently quit as energy secretary, has said he believes Luzon and the Visayas can survive the next tight spots in power supply, especially if committed power projects are delivered on time.

Processing time cut

The carrot-and-stick approach of the DOE has drawn more investors to the energy and power sectors, he said. He noted that the processing time for service contracts had been cut to 45 days (particularly for renewable energy, or RE) from two years.

Petilla said there had been a huge uptake in RE not only due to faster processing of applications but also due to the recent implementation of guidelines for incentives under the feed-in-tariff (FIT) scheme.

FIT incentives

Petilla said encouraging projects to qualify for FIT incentives was so successful that the installation capacity for solar had been expanded to 500 MW from 50 MW and there was a proposal for wind capacity expansion to 400 MW from 200 MW.

Resolving the dispute between Korean firm Kepco and the state-owned Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System over the Angat hydroelectric complex is another accomplishment cited by the DOE. Kepco’s partnership with San Miguel Corp. was formalized.

Supply, demand update

Besides the backup capacity under the ILP and energy-saving information campaign, the DOE established regular updates on the grid’s supply/demand outlook, Petilla said.

“Now we can predict what kind of prices will be in the spot market and we can be on the lookout,” he said.

While addressing the power issue in Luzon, the DOE has improved the outlook and capacity of cooperatives by instituting discipline and making it known that nonpaying cooperatives will be disconnected from the grid, Petilla said.

Circulars

Before leaving his post, he issued several circulars, including one that impose penalties on power suppliers who fail to deliver promised power projects or energy supply. The circular is seen to benefit Mindanao, which is experiencing lingering power outages due to poor contracting by electricity cooperatives.

One circular tightens the implementation of open access by requiring big users to find alternative suppliers besides their current distribution utility. Another circular seeks to ensure a 30-percent share of RE in the country’s energy mix.

Bidding for supply contracts

A circular, which focuses on lowering electricity rates, requires competitive bidding for supply contracts of distribution utilities, such as Manila Electric Co. That means they will no longer “self-negotiate” the generation charges that are eventually passed on to consumers.

Another often volatile issue that the DOE deals with is oil price, but that is a nonissue given the oversupply in the global markets.

Unresolved issues

On Luzon’s electricity price shock in late 2013, Petilla said the DOE had done “everything that needed to be done.” It is now up to the Energy Regulatory Commission to resolve the issue and put it to rest, he said.

Where the DOE has not made headway given the hit taken by oil firms from soft demand since 2014, as well as geopolitical issues in the oil-and-gas-rich West Philippine Sea, is the bidding of new oil exploration sites. Few investors applied for such areas, raising concerns on new investments in the sector.

Ongoing is the privatization of the assets of National Power Corp. (Napocor) so it can pay off its debts and restore its financial health.

In his first Sona in 2010, the President criticized the previous administration for making Napocor sell electricity at a loss to prevent increases in electricity rates from 2001 to 2004. He said this resulted in huge debts that the nation had to pay and inefficiencies that adversely affected customers.

Fast forward to April 2015. Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) said privatization had helped trim down the financial obligations assumed from Napocor by 42 percent to P698.9 billion as of end-2014 from P1.2 trillion as of end-December 2000 (inclusive of interest).

PSALM, which is tasked with privatizing Napocor assets and managing its debts, is ticking off more items on its privatization list between now and 2017.

Auctions

PSALM is set to auction off contracts for the management of the bulk energy output from Leyte and output from the Mindanao coal-fired power plant.

The tender for the Independent Power Producer Administrator (IPPA) for the bulk energy of the Unified Leyte Geothermal Power Plants (ULGPP Bulk) is tentatively set on Aug. 12.

The tender for the IPPA of the 200-MW Mindanao coal-fired power plant is on Sept. 23.

The ULGPP is composed of the 125-MW Upper Mahiao, 232.5-MW Malitbog and

180-MW Mahanagdong power plants, and the 51-MW optimization plants. The ULGPP is covered by power purchase agreements between Napocor and Energy Development Corp.

Also up for auction this year are Power Barge 104 and the decommissioned Sucat Thermal Power Plant.

Next year, the IPPA contract for the Caliraya-Botocan-Kalayaan hydro-electric power power (HEPP) is up for bidding.

Agus-Pulangi complex

In 2017, the Agus-Pulangi HEPP complex may be up for bidding, subject to consultation with Congress as stated in the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) of 2001.

This one is a tricky matter. The continuing deterioration of the Agus and Pulangi plants, along with questions on whether it would be privatized (and if so, how), is the subject of many groups’ opinions given that the hydro plants supply half of Mindanao’s power.

With a combined capacity of 982-MW installed capacity and the top supplier in Mindanao’s grid, it is too large to sell to a lone owner. That would result in a near-monopoly, which is against Epira.

For now, the hydropower complex is under Napocor’s care.

The remaining power generation assets that are not scheduled for auction are the Malaya Thermal Power Plant and the Casecnan Multipurpose Project.

According to PSALM, the privatization of Malaya, a must-run facility, is subject to instructions from the DOE.

The privatization of the Casecnan facility is under the Department of Finance’s review.

Missionary electrification

Napocor, meanwhile, is establishing new Small Power Utilities Group (Spug) areas on Calaguas Island in Camarines Norte province and Camandag Island in Western Samar province.

On top of managing 296 Spug plants across the archipelago, Napocor continues to identify and assess new areas—islands and sitios (settlements) that are not connected to the main grid for missionary electrification.

The DOE’s qualified third party program allows and sets the criteria for private companies to participate in missionary electrification projects, Napocor said.

TRANSPORTATION

By Miguel R. Camus

Big victories and unresolved issues marked the transportation scene under the tenure of President Aquino, but his administration is still hopeful that hard reforms implemented during his term will benefit the public in the coming years.

As the President delivers his final State of the Nation Address (Sona), there remain key issues such as the perennial traffic congestion, which Japanese consultants have estimated to cost P2.4 billion daily in Metro Manila alone.

This comes in tandem with worsening conditions at aging and congested mass railways.

But progress in other areas has been made. Amid congestion issues hounding Manila’s airport passenger terminals, some of which are already being rehabilitated, Philippine carriers have been removed from restrictions imposed by safety regulators in the United States and Europe.

Another relatively bright spot is the administration’s public-private partnership (PPP) program (which is never short of critics), where work with the various implementing agencies has allowed 10 projects, including big-ticket railway, airport and toll road deals, to be awarded thus far.

Transport bottlenecks

A review of Aquino’s previous national addresses showed that while the administration delivered on some areas, it has broadly failed in easing transportation bottlenecks in Metro Manila, where a large part of the country’s economic activity and population is concentrated.

Few pieces of modern transportation infrastructure have drawn the public’s anger as much as the 16-year-old Metro Rail Transit (MRT) Line 3 that traverses Edsa, the main thoroughfare of the capital region of about 12 million people.

MRT 3 is not the biggest of the three elevated trains serving Metro Manila but given the importance of its route, it is the busiest.

It serves more than 500,000 passengers a day, or more than half of the roughly 1 million commuters who use Metro Manila’s train systems daily.

MRT 3’s current load, relative to its 350,000 daily passenger design capacity, years of neglect worsened by legal quarrels with its private sector owner have resulted in constant glitches, breakdowns and long queues.

More recently, the Office of the Ombudsman ordered the filing of graft charges against former MRT 3 General Manager Al Vitangcol III and others over alleged irregularities in the awarding of an MRT maintenance contract.

Issues are also hounding the Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 1 and, more recently, the Philippine National Railways (PNR), whose operations were suspended in May after coaches derailed on what was later blamed on stolen rail tracks.

MRT 3 accident

Yet, the MRT 3 continues to draw the most flak. MRT 3’s problems culminated in an accident in August 2014 when a train derailed in an incident that injured dozens and raised questions over its safety, despite an investigation that later showed human error to be the cause.

The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), nevertheless, responded by slowing down trains and, after a string of incidents, MRT 3’s management further cut operations down to about seven trains from the usual 20 while waiting for new train orders from China to arrive starting 2016.

Despite its outsized problems, at least for Metro Manila commuters, the President has devoted a relatively small part of speeches during the Sona to solutions to solve the MRT 3 mess.

In the past five Sonas, the MRT 3 was given prominence in 2013, when the President made a case for a fare increase, citing billions of pesos in subsidies that could otherwise be used to develop infrastructure outside Metro Manila. By the end of 2014, the fare adjustment was implemented.

Promises on better roads, too, have yet to be realized.

Aquino, in 2012, promised that two elevated “connector roads” linking South Luzon Expressway (SLEx) and North Luzon Expressway, operated respectively by San Miguel Corp. (SMC) and Metro Pacific Investments Corp., would be completed “in 2015.”

And while SMC’s Skyway Stage 3 project is underway and may be done in the next two years, a series of regulatory misfortunes has hit Metro Pacific’s 8-kilometer elevated connector toll road, mainly due to disagreements within the government on how it should be implemented.

At present, the project cannot proceed until a Swiss challenge, scheduled later this year, is held.

Metro Pacific Tollways president Ramoncito Fernandez said that due to those delays, the expressway that would start at C-3 in Caloocan City and end in PUP Sta. Mesa in Manila, would not be finished before 2017.

Aquino also promised that transport hubs in Taguig, Quezon City and Parañaque, known formally as Integrated Transport Systems (ITS) under the PPP program, which will keep provincial buses out of Edsa, would be done “before I leave office,” based on his 2012 Sona.

However, the first ITS project, which will be located near the Manila-Cavite Expressway, is slated for completion by mid-2017.

Stellar results

On air access, the administration has had stellar results, getting major local carriers Philippine Airlines (PAL) and Cebu Pacific removed from a European Union blacklist from 2013 to 2014 following strict reforms implemented by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines. By June this year, the EU lifted the ban on all Philippine carriers.

In 2014, the US Federal Aviation Administration restored the Philippines to its category 1 safety rating after a downgrade during the Arroyo administration in 2008, allowing domestic carriers to again expand operations in the United States.

These ratings matter because they are linked to bolstering tourist numbers, which has been a key initiative of the Aquino administration. The President celebrated this triumph in his 2014 Sona.

“Because of this upgrade, it is likely that there will also be an increase in routes going to the United States. The increase in flights of our local airlines to the United States and participating countries in the European Union is a big help to both tourism and business,” he said last year.

Since then, PAL has launched direct flights from Manila to New York while Cebu Pacific said it was planning to launch flights to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Another means to ease transportation woes is the PPP program. The government noted progress for PPPs, which were launched with huge ambitions although in later years, targets have been tempered amid start-up challenges and issues relating to the implementation of projects and even during the post-award process.

But based on his earliest statements, the President has at least delivered on a promise to streamline the process.

“Growth will only be possible if we streamline processes to make them predictable, reliable and efficient for those who want to invest,” he said in his first Sona in 2010. On the Build-Operate-Transfer projects, Aquino promised that a process “that used to take as short as a year and as long as a decade will now only take six months.”

This can already be achieved today, PPP Center executive director Cosette Canilao said, although she added that delays were not always on the government’s side.

MCX opens

The administration’s first PPP, the Muntinlupa-Cavite Expressway (MCX), formerly Daang-Hari SLEx Link, was awarded to Ayala Corp. in 2011, but is set to open only on Friday, July 24. Interoperability issues with other toll road operators contributed to the delayed opening.

Another deal, the Laguna Lakeshore Expressway Dike project, has also been set back but mainly as bidders sought more time given its complicated requirements.

Work in progress

Canilao admitted that the reform process was “painful” and remained a work in progress.

“It’s not perfect but it’s a lot better than where we came from,” she said. “We’ve created a template on how government can work better.”

She cited an April 2015 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit saying the Philippines ranked seven out of 21 in terms of having “the most improved regulatory and institutional frameworks.”

“The results should speak for themselves, there’s really this confidence now in the PPP process and they [international investors] see the Philippines as a major player in PPPs,” said Canilao.

Those results include the 10 PPP projects awarded thus far to the private sector valued at about $4.2 billion. These are the MCX, PPP for school infrastructure project (Phase 1), Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) Expressway Project, PPP for school infrastructure project (Phase II), modernization of the Philippine Orthopedic Center, Automatic Fare Collection System, Mactan-Cebu International Airport, the LRT 1 Cavite Extension, the ITS-Southwest project, and the Cavite-Laguna Expressway.

From several of these projects, the government is set to generate about P64 billion in premium bid payments.

The government continues to drum up interest in more than 40 major PPP deals worth about $18.1 billion and the steady pipeline of projects should sustain the program beyond Aquino’s term, according to Canilao.

653-km South Line

On July 15, the DOTC rolled out the administration’s biggest PPP to date, the P171-billion South Line railway deal involving 653 kilometers of lines in Luzon, from Metro Manila to Legazpi, Albay, and down to Matnog, Sorsogon. A section links Calamba City to Batangas City.

The DOTC is also expecting participants for a provincial airport auction and the modernization of Davao’s seaport.

“It’s hard to deny that we’re going full-blast on all aspects,” Canilao said, adding that a plan to bid out the operations and maintenance of Naia would be pursued, pending the approval by the National Economic and Development Authority.

The size of these projects, however, means waiting several more years for the large mass-transit projects to come online, assuming no further delays.

Indeed, the DOTC itself admitted that it would take another five to 10 years to address the transportation infrastructure backlog, which could extend even beyond the next administration. For today’s average commuter, a healthy dose of patience should be in order.

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