MANILA - President Rodrigo Duterte has certified as "priority" a bill that seeks to fast-track procurement at the Department of Transportation as part of efforts to ease traffic jams, one of his economic managers said Thursday.

The National Transport Act will be "emergency powers through legislation," Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia told ANC's Headstart.

Duterte had asked Congress at the start of his term last year for "emergency powers" to address traffic congestion that results in P2.4 billion in daily economic losses according to a Japanese study.

"It should have passed already in the first year of the administration, because that is a real crisis," he told ANC's Headstart.

The Senate and the House of Representatives have both approved the grant of emergency powers at the committee level.

Duterte also asked lawmakers to prioritize a law that will make the public-private partnership mode of financing infrastructure projects faster, Pernia said.