Megawide to bid for P19B Kaliwa dam project

MANILA, Philippine—Megawide Construction Corp. seeks to widen its infrastructure business by bidding for the P18.72-billion Kaliwa Dam project to be bid out by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System under the public-private partnership framework.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Tuesday, Megawide said the Kaliwa Dam Project, also known as the New Centennial Water Source, would replace the Bulacan Bulk Water project in its own project line-up.

Megawide earlier disclosed in its prospectus related to its preferred shares offering that it would bid for the Bulacan Bulk Water project and had in fact also purchased bid documents for this.

SCREENGRAB from Megawide website

The project involves the financing, design, and construction of an additional raw water supply source with a design capacity of 600 million liters per day, through the commissioning of the Kaliwa Dam, including intake facilities and other pertinent facilities. Part of the project is a water conveyance system with a design capacity of 2,400 million liters per day, in anticipation of additional inflows from Laiban Dam, which is upstream of the Kaliwa Dam.

The project will be awarded to a private sector partner under a 30-year concession period under a build-transfer structure.

Megawide recently raised P4 billion from the issuance of 40 million non-voting perpetual preferred shares at P100 per share. The issuance of preferred shares rather than outright equity allows Megawide to raise fresh funds for these big-ticket projects while more effectively managing dilution. These preferred shares would be listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday, Dec. 3.

Michael Cosiquien, Megawide chair, said the option to upsize the preferred shares offering by another P3 billion was not exercised because the company deemed the P4 billion fresh fund-raising sufficient for the company’s requirements at present.

Proceeds from the offering will be used by Megawide for various infrastructure projects under the PPP framework. It has won four of such PPP projects under the Aquino administration, including the hotly contested Mactan Cebu International Airport rehabilitation project through a consortium with the Indian company GMR.

Megawide also won the P5.7-billion build-operate-transfer project for the Philippine Orthopedic Center and two school infrastructure projects implemented by the Department of Education.

Cosiquien said Megawide would be interested to bid for other airport-related PPP projects and would also “study” toll road projects.