The three firms that were pre-qualified with the concurrence of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) are the MTI joint venture which is composed of Maeda Corp., Toyo Construction Co. Ltd. and Ishikawa-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd.; the Hazama-Taisei-Nippon joint venture which is made up of Hazama Corp., Taisei Corp. and Nippon Steel Corp.; and the last bidder is the Kojim joint venture comprised of the Kajima Corp., Obayashi Corp., JFE Engineering Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.
The estimated cost of Package 2 or the 44 kilometer, four-lane super highway that will connect Clark to Tarlac is P6.5 billion.
It would have been seven interchanges, nine bridges, 98 culverts, 11 overpasses and 13 underpasses.
It would also include the Sacobia-Bamban River Bridge as a major bridge structure.
Actual construction is slated to begin by March next year, with completion targetted by year 2006. BCDA president and chief executive officer Rufo Colayco expressed optimism that there would be no further delays so that the government could meet the target timelines for the proposed superhighway project.
According to Colayco, the toll road is an essential part of building a new economic frontier in Central Luzon.
Once finished, SCTEP would become the longest toll way ever to be built in the country.
It would reduce travel time between Subic and Clark to only 30 minutes from the present two-hour drive. Colayco added that the construction of the superhighway is critical to the medium- to long-term plan of the government to link Subic and Clark to the rest of Central Luzon.
"The linkage and alliance of the two former US military bases will allow for the strategic pooling of resources of the Subic Bay Freeport and Clark Field’s Diosdado Macapagal International Airport and transform the area into an inter-modal transport hub," Colayco said.
The SCTEP would also benefit the Luisita Park Industrial estate, making the ecozone more accessible and attractive to locators, he added.
Meanwhile, BCDA vice-president for operations and SCTEP program director Antonio Rex Chan said that the opening of the financial bid for the second phase (Package 1) which covers 50.5 kilometers of the four-lane superhighway that would link Subic to Clark would be done by January 20, 2004.
Earlier, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) opened the financial bids for the developmen and modernization of Subic Bay port.
The twin projects, Subic port and SCTEP, are both beneficiaries of the JBIC. The total project cost of the SCTEP is $374.78 million or P18.74 billion, 85 percent of which would come from JBIC and the remaning 15 percent from counterpart funds from BCDA.
The SBMA port modernization project, on the other hand, secured financial funding from JBIC amounting to $215 million.