Timothy John Batan | Undersecretary for Railways
Department of Transportation | Philippines

Undersecretary TJ Batan has been working in the Philippine transportation department for seven years, first as a Planning Officer in 2015 working on several maritime, airport development, port modernization, and other mass transit projects until he was eventually appointed as an Assistant Secretary for Rail in 2017, and then as Undersecretary in 2018. As the Undersecretary for Railways, he led the sector in implementing decades-delayed rail projects, expanding the rail network from 77 km to 1203 km, increasing number of awarded rail contracts, securing financing worth 1.5B pesos in Official Development Assistance, increasing disbursements, and fixing the degraded state of MRT-3, Metro Manila's metro rail backbone, back to design condition in record time. By working in building the dream railway network for the Philippines, he has been pivotal in the fulfillment of the Build! Build! Build! program's promise of a more comfortable life for the Filipinos.