Architectural Design of one of the stations of the Cebu City Bus Rapid Transit Project. Photo from Cebu City BRT Facebook
MANILA, Philippines — The Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system should push through despite the call of Senator Nancy Binay to reconsider the project, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said Monday.
“We feel that it should be continued for the sake not only of the Cebuanos but all over Visayas and Mindanao,” Tugade said in an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel.
“Tuloy [ito]. In fact, the first phase of procurement on phase 1 will already be started by the end of this year,” he added.
In a Senate hearing on Friday on the proposed budget of the DOTr for 2021, Binay said the DOTr already spent P7 billion for the long-delayed Cebu BRT system but not a single excavation has been done since the project started in 2015.
She noted that the project, funded by a P16.5-billion loan from the World Bank, was supposed to be operational by June 2021.
“I think we should seriously rethink this project because this is funded by a foreign loan and nothing has happened five years after it supposedly started,” Binay said.
Sen. Nancy Binay (Screen grab/ Senate PRIB)
“Did you study this in the DOTr? Maybe it’s time to rethink this because it could not be feasible to begin with,” she asked transportation officials at the hearing.
Tugade, however, said that the P16 billion has yet to be released by the World Bank for the project.
“Merong commitment fee at interest but utang as is wala pa[ng binabayaran],” he said.
(There are commitment fees and interest but there is no loan paid yet.)
DOTr Secretary Arthur Tugade. INQUIRER.net/Ryan Leagogo