San Miguel Corp. and Citra group of Indonesia have sealed a deal to take over the 35.9-kilometer tollway South Luzon Expressway project.
The partners have also drawn up plans to jointly invest P64.5 billion in more road projects linked to the Southern Luzon corridor.
SMC disclosed to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday that its wholly owned subsidiary San Miguel Holdings (SMH) and the Citra group had completed the acquisition of MTD Bahrain—an offshore company owned by Malaysian group MTD Berhad—through joint investment vehicle Arum Atlantic Inc. (AAI). The value of the transaction was not disclosed but industry sources estimated the deal at more than P20 billion.
MTD Bahrain is the parent company of MTD Manila Expressway Inc., which owns 80 percent of South Luzon Tollway Corp. (SLTC), the concessionaire of SLEx which starts at Alabang, Muntinlupa City, and ends in Sto.Tomas, Batangas. This tollroad connects directly to the 16-km Skyway System’s Makati to Alabang at-grade and elevated toll roads of Citra Metro Manila Tollways Corp.
SMC president Ramon Ang said this transaction would bring the conglomerate closer to consolidating the southern Luzon backbone road network which, in turn, would offer a “unique opportunity” for the SMC-Citra partnership to participate in various mature, developing and green field toll road opportunities in the country.
“We are highly committed to this partnership with San Miguel, and we look forward to working with them in being able to fast-track several big-ticket infrastructure projects under the concessions of Citra-Philippine National Construction Corp. (PNCC) and SLTC,” Citra president Shadik Wahono said.
SLEx has a daily traffic of about 120,000 cars while Skyway has a daily traffic of 180,000 cars.
AAI was also invited and is now in discussion with the concession holder of the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR), which plans to repave, widen and expand its 42-km toll road from Sto. Tomas to Batangas City. This toll road has a traffic of 30,000 cars per day.
SMC owns 46 percent of AAI with an option to increase it up to 51 percent in the future through SMH.
The SLTC concession also has several expansion opportunities within the Calabarzon (Calamba-Laguna-Batangas-Quezon) area and further down south, linking Laguna to Lucena (TR4).
AAI plans to immediately pursue the 56-km Laguna to Lucena project, which is under the concession of SLTC. AAI is also keen to participate in the 14-km elevated six-lane, Citra-PNCC Alignment (CPA), or stage 3, which will link its existing Buendia Skyway to Balintawak and the 31-km Metro Manila Expressway, or Stage 4, which will again link the Skyway and the Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) in Taguig City to Batasan in Quezon City. These two projects all connect to AAI’s Skyway and are part of the existing concessions between the Citra Group in partnership with the state-owned PNCC, which owns the remaining 20 percent of the SLEx project.
The estimated investment for the four projects (including the STAR expansion) amounts to P64.5billion (US$1.47billion) and these are expected to be completed in 36 to 48 months their approval by the government.
The San Miguel-Citra consortium said it may consider tapping the capital and debt markets to bankroll the projects.