Gov’t grants 90-day extension for LRT-MRT bid

The government has pushed back the deadline for submission of offers for the joint operation and management contract of Metro Manila’s main commuter train lines, allowing interested parties more time to study project details.

Officials of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) last week notified prospective bidders about the extension, but the final bulletin had not been issued yet.

“I got the news [Thursday] via text message, but [DoTC officials] said they would issue a bid bulletin to make it official,” said an executive of one of the groups interested in bidding for the P14-billion contract.

The original deadline for the submission of bids was July 11. The contract to operate the Light Rail Transit line 1 and Metro Rail Transit (MRT) is the first project under the administration’s public private partnership (PPP) infrastructure scheme.

The winning bidder will have five years to operate the two train lines as a single system. The government expects services to drastically improve by being more efficient.

The contract’s duration will start in January 2012, which means the extension of the deadline to submit bids is unlikely to result in a delay in the project’s implementation.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. and local firm Autro Porte Technique Global Inc. were the two firms that requested for the extension of at least 90 days.

Transportation Undersecretary Ruben S. Reinoso said companies had asked for an extension of at least 90 days to have more time to study the 3,000-page bid document that the DoTC had given out.

Reinoso said bidders also needed more time for “site inspections and due diligence.”

A total of 16 companies so far have expressed their interest in bidding for the contract. Among them are local conglomerates Ayala Corp., San Miguel Corp. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp.

Marubeni Corp., Sumitomo Corp., US-based BF Construction Services Inc., Swedish company Bombardier Transportation and international tech giant Siemens are among the interested foreign bidders.

DoTC officials said local groups would need to bring international partners since no one in the country’s private sector has experience in operating train lines.

About a million people use the LRT line 1 (Baclaran to Roosevelt) and MRT (Taft to North Avenue) every day. A separate contract to increase the train system’s capacity, through the addition of new coaches and expansion of stations, will be auctioned off separately.