DOTC to pursue Cebu airport bidding

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) is bent on pursuing the bidding for the P17.5 billion Mactan Cebu International Airport passenger terminal project despite a complaint filed before the Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court.

Michael Arthur Sagcal, spokesperson of DOTC, said the agency is set to push through with the scheduled opening of the bids for the project on Aug. 28.

Sagcal said the agency’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) acted within the law when it conducted a series of one-on-one meetings with the seven prequalified bidders.

 â€œWe have made sure that we have acted fully within the law and we will continue the bidding process unless prohibited by the courts,” he stressed.

Sagcal issued the statement after a certain Danilo Cruz of

Hagonoy, Bulacan sought the immediate issuance of a temporary order or a writ of preliminary injunction preventing the DOTC-BAC from bidding out the project which is being undertaken through a public private partnership (PPP) scheme.

Cruz questioned one-on-one meetings held by the agency’s BAC with the seven prequalified bidders.

Sagcal said the agency is now reviewing the petition that they received late Thursday.

 â€œWe just received a copy of the petition and we will need time to review it,” he added.

The prequalified bidders include AAA Airport Partners led by conglomerate Ayala Corp. and Cebu-based Aboitiz Equity Ventures together with Houston airport operator ADC&HAS; Filinvest-CAI Consortium of taipan Andrew Gotianun together with Singapore’s Changi Airport; Lopez-led First Philippine Airports together with New Zealand’s Infratil Asia Limited.

 Other groups include the GMR Infrastructure and Megawide Consortium that includes India’s Delhi Airport; MPIC-JGS Airport Consortium composed of the tandem of infrastructure conglomerate Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and JG Summit Holdings of tycoon John L. Gokongwei Jr. together with Aeroports de Lyon of France; SM-led Premier Airport Group of retail magnate Henry Sy together with Switzerland’s Zurich Airport operators; and San Miguel-Incheon Airport Consortium of diversified conglomerate San Miguel Corp. and the operator of South Korea’s Incheon Airport.

Sagcal earlier said the project would modernize the country’s second-largest aviation hub and the gateway to the Visayas with the construction of a new world-class international passenger terminal building with a capacity of eight million passengers.

Sagcal said the existing terminal building that has been operating at over-capacity with 6.7 million passengers going through the 4.5-million passenger capacity structure in 2012 would also be renovated.

The Aquino administration’s PPP initiative suffered a setback last week when only one of the four prequalified bidders of the proposed P60 billion light rail transit line 1 (LRT1) Cavite extension project submitted a bid.

To make matters worse, the bid submitted by Light Rail Manila consortium led by infrastructure conglomerate Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) was non compliant while MTD-Samsung Group, San Miguel Infrastructure Resources Inc., and DMCI Holdings Inc. withdrew their participation in the bidding process.