Due to protest of losing bidder MCIA expansion award deferred

CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) postponed the issuance of notice of award to the contractor for the new passenger terminal of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA).

Cebu Governor Hilario Davide III yesterday said that the Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) Board held a special meeting in Manila on Tuesday to take up the recommendation of the DOTC Bids and Awards Committee (BAC).

Davide is a member of the board.

The DOTC was supposed to award the project on January 6 and to seal the contract by January 27. The concession agreement had been scheduled for signing on February 6.

But a losing bidder, Filinvest-Changi Airport consortium, wrote to the DOTC BAC asking for the disqualification of the tandem of Megawide Construction Corp. and GMR Infrastructure Ltd., the winning bidder.

Filinvest-Changi also questioned the qualification of Megawide and GMR, which posted the highest bid of P14.4-billion for the P17.5-billion MCIA deal.

Davide told reporters that the issues raised by Filinvest-Changi should be resolved first before the notice of award can be issued.

The governor is hoping that the issues would be resolved soon to prevent any delay of the project, which is under the Private Public Partnership (PPP) scheme.

The project involves the construction of a world-class international passenger terminal at the MCIA, renovation and expansion of the existing terminal.

Davide supported the idea that the new terminal building be managed privately as part of the PPP scheme. But the DOTC and MCIAA still exercise the regulatory supervision over the private operator.

"I'm okay with that, I'm okay with the privatization," he said.

However, there are apprehensions that charges might go up if the airport is privately managed.

"That's bound to happen because that's what you pay for convenience, for efficiency, for the services you get from this airport operator," he said.

The MCIAA, meanwhile, also commenced the bidding for the relocation of some facilities of the Philippine Air Force (PAF) to give way to the new airport terminal.

The approved budget for this contract is P801,409,325.60. The MCIAA will have a pre-bid conference on January 15 and the deadline for the submission of bids will be on February 17.

Bidding documents are available at the airport until February 17 for P75,000.

The MCIA expansion project is the first airport deal under the PPP scheme of the Aquino administration. It was launched in 2010.

The project was one of the seven PPPs approved by National Economic and Development Authority.

It aims to modernize the country's second largest airport through construction of a new passenger terminal to cope with an annual capacity of eight million passengers.

Once the new terminal building is finished, the existing terminal will be used as a domestic passenger terminal. -/LPM (FREEMAN)