DOTC advances to May 18 bid submission for Taguig hub

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) has fast-tracked the bidding process for the P4-billion Integrated Transport System (ITS) – South Terminal in Taguig City.

DOTC assistant secretary for legal affairs Jaime Fortunato Caringal issued General Bid Bulletin No. 12 – 2015 moving the submission date for bid proposals for the public private partnership (PPP) project to May 18 instead of June 1.

Just last month, the DOTC deferred the submission of bids to June 1 instead of April 13 in order to give the pre-qualified companies more time to prepare their proposals.

The DOTC had already prequalifiedlast Dec. 19, 2014 Ayala Land Inc., Filinvest Land Inc. of taipan Andrew Gotianun, Datem Inc., and MWM Terminals led by Filipino-owned Megawide Construction Corp. for the PPP project.

Caringal, who is a member of the agency’s Pre-Qualification, Bids and Awards Committee, said the DOTC is set to hold the second round of one-on-one meetings with the four prequalified bidders from March 16 to 20.

The PPP project is being undertaken by the DOTC under the Build-Transfer-Operate scheme of the Build-Operate-Transfer law. The concession period is 35 years.

After the submission of bid proposals, the DOTC would undertake a two-step evaluation wherein the technical proposals would first be evaluated after which the financial proposals of bidders who passed the technical evaluation would be opened and evaluated.

The DOTC said the bid amount could be in the form of an annual grantor payment wherein the government would pay the winning concessionaire to undertake the project or in the form of annual concession payment to be paid by the concessionaire to the DOTC.

The 5.57-hectare South terminal would connect passengers from the Laguna and Batangas side to other urban transport systems such as the proposed P288 billion North-South Commuter Rail of the Philippine National Railways, city buses, taxis, and other public utility vehicles that serve inner Metro Manila.

The project would include a passenger terminal building, arrival and departure bays, public information systems, ticketing and baggage holding facilities as well as park-ride facilities.

The DOTC earlier awarded the P2.5 billion ITS -Southwest Terminal project along the Manila-Cavite Expressway (Cavitex) to Megawide-led MWM Terminals which submitted an annual grantor payment of P100 million for the project, topping the P650 million annual grantor payment submitted by competitor Filinvest Land.

The ITS-Southwest terminal would connect passengers coming from Cavite to other urban transport systems such as the future Light Rail Transit line 1 (LRT) South Extension to Bacoor in Cavite, city bus, taxi, and other public utility vehicles plying Metro Manila.

The DOTC is still identifying the final site for the ITS-North Terminal. It is now focusing on the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC).

The P7.7 billion ITS projects would maximize road usage by reducing vehicle volume and eliminating provincial bus traffic to improve traffic flow along Metro Manila’s major thoroughfares particularly EDSA.