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The Philippines
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III

Opinion | Philippines must iron out obstacles to get China on board its railway building spree

  • President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr looks to make up for lost time as he targets improvements in the country’s rail transport network
  • China has been tapped for three mega rail projects and the Philippines could benefit from Beijing’s infrastructure experience if negotiations bear fruit

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A Metro Rail Transit train in Makati City, Metro Manila. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has targeted improvements in country’s rail transport network. Photo: Bloomberg
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III
As Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr builds on the momentum of his predecessor’s ambitious infrastructure programme, he has made railways the new focus amid China’s investment interest in three projects.
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Marcos Jnr has proclaimed infrastructure to be “the backbone of an economy” and a “necessary element” to improve other sectors such as agriculture, tourism and even governance.

The president previously lamented that the Philippines had “missed a great opportunity” to develop its rail transport system, with delays and a limited pool of funders making it difficult for major undertakings in the country to be completed within a single administration.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. Photo: AP
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. Photo: AP
Marcos Jnr paid tribute to his predecessor’s efforts to address the country’s decades-old infrastructure deficit, saying that Rodrigo Duterte built “more and better than” the administrations that succeeded his father, the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos Snr.

Last year, Duterte opened Metro Manila’s Light Rail Transit (LRT) 2 extension to adjacent Rizal province. Under his term, work on the Japan-backed Metro Manila Subway and the Asian Development Bank-funded Calamba-to-Clark North-South Commuter Railway also commenced.

His team also began work to extend LRT 1 – built by Marcos Snr in 1981 to 1985 – to the neighbouring Cavite province and started constructing the new Metro Rail Transit 7, which would link the capital region with another nearby province, Bulacan.

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Marcos Jnr has ordered the Department of Transportation to go “full speed ahead” on work for these projects, a reflection of his desire to make up for lost time. He pledged to set aside 5 to 6 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product for public works spending and promised to “complete on schedule the projects that have been started”.

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