Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the Metro Manila Subway Project at the Valenzuela depot on Saturday, November 4.
In a live video posted by the Department of Transportation (DOTr), the Prime Minister was accompanied by Transportation Secretary Jaime J. Bautista and Undersecretary Cesar Chavez.
Kishida, who hails from a country with 150 years of experience in rail development and 30,000 kilometers of rail, has been supporting the Philippines&rsquo; ambitious rail expansion.
The current subway project, dubbed "Project of the Century," has two huge tunnel boring machines digging hundreds of meters of tunnel.
Through the 33-km subway project with 17 stations from Valenzuela City to Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3, travel time is expected to reduce.
DOTr said that travel time ranges from 1 hour and 30 minutes to 35 minutes.
In a separate statement on Thursday, Secretary Bautista acknowledged the Prime Minister for helping the country with its transportation challenges.
&ldquo;The Philippine railway sector has been a recipient of billions of pesos in Japanese aid. PM Kishida, long before he was Prime Minister, has been instrumental in funneling Japanese assistance to the country&rsquo;s ambitious rail expansion,&rdquo; Bautista said.
According to Bautista, Prime Minister Kishida "was already a backer of our country&rsquo;s drive to modernize our transportation system" when he was still Japan&rsquo;s Foreign Affairs Minister in 2017.
Through the JPY 1.315 trillion worth of Japanese aid, about nine Philippine big-ticket transport projects&mdash;two aviation, two maritime, and five railways&mdash;are being built or will be delivered.

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Japanese PM Kishida visits Metro Manila subway project