‘Ayala still supports PPP program’

Conglomerate Ayala Corp. has no plans of shunning the Aquino administration’s public private partnership program after President Aquino last week ordered a rebid of the Cavite Laguna Expressway deal it expected to win with partner Aboitiz Land Inc., a top official said Monday.

Ayala managing director Eric Francia told reporters in a briefing that while the company is unlikely to participate in a Calax rebid, which the government said would happen in the first half of 2015, he said there are other projects in the PPP pipeline where they see strategic opportunities.

Francia stopped short of making a formal statement on Calax, saying the Ayala-Aboitiz consortium known as Team Orion has yet to be officially notified by the Department of Public Works and Highways early Monday.

Still, Francia said the conglomerate is prepared to spend $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion in equity financing, with at least $1 billion of that amount going to power projects mainly in Bataan province and Lanao del Norte.

The remainder would be for PPP deals it had won, either by itself or with partners. These are the Light Rail Transit Line 1 extension to Cavite, Automated Fare Collection System and the 4-kilometer Daang-Hari-SLEx Link Road project, which it renamed yesterday into the Muntinlupa Cavite Expressway, or MCX.

“As we said before, we are unlikely to participate in the event of a [Calax] rebid. We don’t wish to overemphasize this but I believe this is still the position,” Francia said. “That position is limited to Calax. We will continue to look at other PPP projects,” Francia said.

He said projects they are currently eyeing include the P123-billion Laguna Lakeshore Expressway Dike project and the LRT-2 operations and maintenance contract.

President Aquino, in an order dated Nov. 19, directed the DPWH special bids and awards committee to rebid the Calax project.

In the order, Aquino granted the appeal that San Miguel Corp.’s disqualification be reversed but denied the latter’s request that its P20.1 billion offer, the highest had it not been disqualified, be considered, paving the way for another auction. Team Orion had offered P11.66 billion, edging out two other groups.

SMC’s Optimal Infrastructure Development was removed from the running because the date on its bid security was four days short of the required 180 days.

In its order, the Office of the President said the discrepancy was a mere typographical error and the company should not have been disqualified.

“Considering that Optimal should not have been disqualified in the first place, in the interest of fair play and to best protect the interest of the government, which is of paramount consideration, this office deems that the circumstances of this case necessitates the conduct of a re-bidding,” part of the document read.