Transco to adopt e-bidding for infrastructure projects

The National Transmission Corp. (Transco) will carry out an electronic bidding (e-bidding) system for all its infrastructure projects.

Transco president Alan T. Ortiz said that doing away with the envelope system of bidding in favor of the e-bidding will enable the company to have more transparent auctions for its projects.

"We are developing a (bidding) system that we will apply to all our infrastructure projects. This will provide greater transparency in our bidding process," he said.

The e-bidding is currently being used by the National Power Corp. (Napocor) in auctioning off coal requirements.

The Transco, under a restructured power industry, will handle all the transmission assets of Napocor.

Ortiz said a technical group will present to the Transco board in its next meeting the new e-bidding system to be used for the infrastructure projects.

He added they would be ready to use the e-bidding system on all of its projects by June in time for the bidding for the Leyte-Cebu Interconnection Project.

After the Leyte-Cebu project, Transco will bid out the Cebu-Mactan Interconnection Project in August or September this year, to be followed by the Negros-Panay Interconnection Project by January 2004.

The Leyte-Cebu project, costing around $68.5 million, is scheduled to be auctioned off by June this year. The project will be completed by May 2005.

The implementation of the Cebu-Mactan project, meanwhile, was approved by the National Economic Development Authority’s Investment Coordinating Council (ICC) last Jan. 30, 2003.

The completion of another crucial project, Leyte-Mindanao Interconnection Project (LMIP), was moved to 2011 based on the latest Transmission Development Plan (TDP).

The LMIP was supposed to start a few years back but was delayed due to the change of administration.