Gov’t fails to bid out another PPP project

The Department of Transportation and Communication Friday failed to set a bid submission date for a public private partnership (PPP) project aimed at modernizing and expanding key regional airports, likely ruling out an award before the term of President Aquino ends in June this year.

PPP Center executive director Andre Palacios, who earlier warned that the department’s bids and awards committee had until Friday to set a date or risk the project being deferred to the next administration, said that no bid deadline was set in Friday’s meeting.

Still, officials stopped short of commenting on the exact status of the project, which covers the operations, maintenance and development of the Bacolod-Silay, Iloilo, Davao, Laguindingan and New Bohol air gateways. The projects have a combined value of P108 billion.

“If the bid date is after next week (mid-May onwards), the contract can’t be awarded and signed by June 30,” Palacios said in a text message.

“We will just gift wrap these procurements for the next administration,” he added. “I hope the next team will pick up where we left off and complete the procurements. These procurements went through a fair and transparent process and the projects are long overdue.”

Transportation officials, in previous interviews, said the regional airports PPP deal still lacked certain government approvals. Some aspects of the PPP project faced legal snags, such as the Davao International Airport, which was cited in a temporary restraining order issued by the Davao Regional Trial Court last year.

Rene Limcaoco, transportation undersecretary for planning, said Friday that they were still pushing to have project awarded before June 30.

However, the lack of clarity at this stage leaves too narrow a window to complete the award process, according to Karim Garcia, vice president for business development at Metro Pacific Investments Corp., which is eyeing the PPP project.

Garcia, who noted that the government needed to bid out the project by May 6 this year “at the latest”, said Friday the failure to set a date made it unrealistic for bidders to prepare offers by next week.

Metro Pacific, along with a number of other bidders, have already written the DOTC, stating their willingness to submit offers for the project.

Apart from Metro Pacific, which partnered with Aéroports de Paris and TAV Havalimanlari Holdings A.S, the other pre-qualified groups are San Miguel Corp. and South Korea’s Incheon Airport, Aboitiz Equity Ventures with VINCI Airports, Megawide Construction Corp. and India’s GMR Infrastructure, the Filinvest Group with Japan’s Sojitz and Jatco.

Garcia said the project was badly needed and underwent a long, transparent process to get to this stage.

He said passing the project to the next administration could delay its auction by another six months to a year, during which time the bidders would incur extra costs and could redo due diligence, while badly needed infrastructure upgrades are pushed back.