PPP agency meets ’12 rollout target

THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE Partnership (PPP) Center reached its 2012 target of rolling out eight projects when the Department of Transportation and Communication opened the bid for the Mactan-Cebu International Airport project yesterday.

The Department of Education likewise published on Thursday its invitation to prequalify to bid (ITPB) for the second phase of the PPP school infrastructure project (PSIP), a government effort to bridge the classroom gap across the country.

In the second phase of the PSIP, 10, 679 classrooms, including furniture and toilets, will be constructed in 5,033 public schools in 14 regions.

The PSIP, the government’s first social infrastructure project, would benefit a total of 480,555 students through better school facilities conducive for learning in its second phase, the PPP Center reported.

The center said prospective bidders for PSIP II must submit their applications for prequalification to Education departments Prequalification, Bids, and Awards committee (PBAC) not later than 10 a.m. on Feb. 12.

With the bidding on two major government projects soon to take place, the PPP center was able to hit its full-year rollout target.

“We are very pleased about the outcome…. The game plan was to focus on structuring these projects properly and to successfully bid them out,” PPP Center executive director Cosette V. Canilao said Friday in a briefing.

The eight projects are phases I and II of the Department of Education’s school infrastructure project, the Naia expressway project of the Department of Public Works and Highways, operation and maintenance work on LRT Line 1 Cavite Extension, the Contactless Automatic Fare Collection System and Mactan International Airport Terminal building of the Department of Transportation and Communications, the modernization of the Philippine Orthopedic Center under the Department of Health, the rehabilitation and maintenance of Angat hydroelectric power plant auxiliary turbines 4 and 5 of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System.

Canilao claimed there was no delay in the projects and that the PPP program are right on schedule.

By 2013, Canilao said that six of the eight projects would be implemented.

“As of now, there are just preliminary work. We would only see construction starting next year,” she said.

Six projects also received financial support from the governments’ Project Development and Monitoring Fund to assist in the conduct of feasibility studies, submission of documents for PPP projects and the bidding process.

“With the eight projects rolled out this year, the bar has been set higher,” Canilao said.  Niña P. Calleja