By Lailany P. Gomez | Nov. 29, 2013 at
12:04am [ manilastandardtoday.com ]
The Transportation Department said
Thursday all the seven pre-qualified groups submitted technical and financial
bids for the P17.5-billion Mactan-Cebu International Airport project,
indicating the private sector’s strong interest in the first airport project
under the public-private partnership scheme.
“The high turnout is proof that
investors are confident in our PPP program. We want to sustain the momentum
from this project to the next ones in our pipeline,” said Transportation
Department spokesman Michael Arthur Sagcal.
Sagcal said the agency’s special bids
and awards committee would have 20 days to evaluate all the technical bid
proposals submitted by the groups, before opening the financial bids.
The seven groups that submitted the
bids were AAA Airport Partners led by the Ayala and Aboitiz conglomerates; the
Filinvest-CAI Airport consortium; the Lopez group’s First Philippine Airports;
the GMR Infrastructure and Megawide consortium; the MPIC-JGS Airport consortium
of businessmen Manuel Pangilinan and John Gokongwei; SM’s Premier Airport
Group; and the San Miguel-Incheon Airport consortium.
The roster of foreign airport
operators that teamed up with the local conglomerates included ADC & HAS of
Houston Airport, Malaysia Airports Berhad, Singapore’s Changi Airport, South
Korea’s Incheon Airport, France’s Aeroports de Lyon, Switzerland’s Zurich
Airport and India’s Delhi Airports.
The National Economic and Development
Authority earlier approved the amended terms of the MCIA project. The project
aims to modernize the country’s second-largest aviation hub with the
construction of a new world-class international passenger terminal building to
accommodate 8 million passengers annually.
It will also renovate the existing
terminal building, which has been operating over the capacity with 6.7 million
passengers.
The Transportation Department’s
P1.72-billion automatic fare collection system also garnered strong interest
from five consortiums last week.
The agency’s special bids and awards
committee is now evaluating the technical proposals submitted for both the AFCS
and MCIA projects and expects to proceed to the opening and evaluation of
financial proposals in December.
Meanwhile, the bidding process for the
P64.9-billion Light Rail Transit Line 1 Cavite extension project will begin
next week, when the transport agency publishes its invitation to bid.
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