Business World, 01 January 2014

 

THE GOVERNMENT has put off naming the winner of an automatic ticketing contract for Metro Manila’s light railways, noting appeals filed by interested investors.

The winning bidder for the P1.72-billion Automatic Fare Collection System (AFCS), offered last month by the government under its flagship public-private partnership (PPP) program, was supposed to have been announced on Dec. 23.

With the date having passed, Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilo A. Abaya said, “We have to answer the motions for reconsideration filed by the bidders.”

His deputy, Undersecretary Jose Perpetuo M. Lotilla, said the announcement would now be made sometime this month. He declined to be more specific.

The Transportation department also aimed to award the project by Dec. 30 or 31 last year and then have the concession agreement inked on Jan. 24.

Mr. Abaya said E-Trans Solutions Joint Venture, Inc., disqualified after its technical proposal failed to pass muster, had asked the department to reconsider its decision.

E-Trans counsel Conrad S. Tolentino confirmed that the firm had asked for “clarifications from the DoTC’s (Department of Transportation and Communications) bids and awards committee regarding its decision of disqualifying the group. These have not been answered.”

“The letters include a request to open the financial proposal of E-Trans,” Mr. Tolentino added.

Megawide-Suyen-Eurolink Consortium, another bidder whose technical proposal failed a Transportation department review, said it had not appealed.

A Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and Ayala Corp. consortium submitted the best bid during the auction, offering the government a P1.08-billion premium on top of the project cost.

It beat out the SM Consortium’s premium offer by just P103,900.

A third bidder, the Comworks consortium, offered to do the project at a cost of P2.05 billion.

The AFCS, targeted to be operational by 2015, aims to unify and upgrade the ticketing system for Light Rail Transit Lines 1 and 2 and Metro Rail Transit Line 3.

It is among the seven PPP projects expected to be completed when President Benigno S.C. Aquino III bows out in 2016, the others being:

• the P1.96-billion Daang Hari-South Luzon expressway project;

• P16.42-billion PPP School Infrastructure Program (PSIP) Phase 1;

• P3.86-billion PSIP Phase II;

• P15.68-billion Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) expressway;

• the P5.69-billion Philippine Orthopedic Center modernization project; and

• the P7.7-billion Integrated Transport System (ITS).

In all, a total of 15 PPP projects are expected to have been awarded by 2016.

Contracts for five of the seven targeted for completion have so far been issued, the exceptions being the AFCS and the ITS projects.