MANILA, March 12 -- The government is eyeing to tap the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to fund the Philippine National Railway - South Long-Haul project, an official of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) said Tuesday.

NEDA Assistant Secretary Jonathan Uy told the Congressional Oversight Committee on the Official Development Assistance (COCODA) panel that they are waiting for the result of the detailed engineering to "leap frog" the project directly to bidding out both design and building.

"We are now informally discussing with the Asian Development Bank whether they will be able to glide in to the project in order to ensure continuing effort here," Uy told the panel.

"We are a go. It's a question of how early we can move ...