Bid issues delay award of 2 PPP deals

The awarding of two public-private partnership (PPP) deals auctioned off by the Department of Transportation and Communications in December will be delayed, government officials said on Friday.

The larger of the two projects, the P17.5-billion Mactan-Cebu International Airport, will not be awarded today as the DOTC settles issues raised by the Filinvest Group, which lost to a consortium made up of India’s GMR Infrastructure and Megawide Construction Corp. last Dec. 12, Transportation Secretary Joseph Abaya said.

Also, the Transportation department’s bids and awards committee needs to resolve an appeal filed by a disqualified bidder of the P1.72-billion automated fare collection system (AFCS), which was supposed to be awarded on Dec. 24, DOTC spokesperson Michael Sagcal said.

No new dates were given, but the PPP Center executive director Cosette V. Canilao said that the government would “need a few more days” to decide on the Mactan-Cebu International Airport project.

The AFCS deal was bogged down by a motion for reconsideration filed by E-Trans Solutions Joint Venture, which was disqualified by the DOTC bids and awards committee during the technical evaluation phase and, as a result, its financial proposal was not opened on Dec. 9.

Three proposals for the AFCS deal, which lead to the establishment of a common smart card system for Metro Manila’s three railway lines, were opened.

A consortium led by Ayala Corp. and Metro Pacific Investments offered the highest at just above P1.088 billion, edging out the second highest bidder, the SM Group, by P103,900.

Megawide and GMR are the frontrunners for the airport PPP deal, submitting an offer of P14.4 billion. It was about P400 million more than the offer of the second highest bidder, a consortium led by the Gotianun family’s Filinvest Group and a unit of Singapore’s Changi Group.

The latter is currently calling for the disqualification of GMR-Megawide, alleging that GMR has a poor track record in operating airports abroad.

But Canilao noted that all companies complied with the bid requirements.

“Need to resolve this first,” Abaya said in a text message, referring to the protest filed by Filinvest and the Changi Group.

The Mactan-Cebu International Airport project, which is running beyond normal capacity, will entail the construction of a new world-class international passenger terminal building with a capacity of about eight million passengers a year.

The facility has an annual capacity of 4.5 million passengers, but it booked around 6.2 million in 2011.

The winner of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport PPP will operate the facility for 25 years while the winner of the AFCS will operate the system for 10 years.