18 December 2012, GMA News

by Siegfrid Alegado

 

Two more big-ticket infrastructure projects under the flagship public-private partnership (PPP) program will be rolled-out this week, a senior official said Tuesday.

“Invitations to bid for the Mactan-Cebu airport and second phase of the school building project are set this week,” Cosette Canilao, PPP Center executive director, told reporters in an ambush interview at the sidelines of an economic briefing in Pasig City.

She was referring to the P13.14 billion PPP for School Infrastructure Project (Phase II) and the  P8.87 billion project to build the new Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) building.

According to a brief on the PPP Center website, the school infrastructure project involves the design and construction of 10,679 classrooms in over 5000 state-run schools nationwide. It is eyed for implementation in 2013 to 2014.

The airport project involves the “construction of a new world-class passenger terminal building in the MCIA that can service about 8 million passengers,” a separate brief noted.

The project, under a 20-year build-rehabilitate-operate-transfer scheme, also requires the operation of both new and old facilities in the complex.

“These two projects would then make a total of seven PPP projects in advanced stages before the year-ends,” Canilao said.

Canilao’s statement followed the roll-out of the P1.72-billion, 10-year contract to finance, design, construct, operate and maintain a contactless automatic fare collection system for the Light Rail Transit Lines 1 and 2 and the Metro Rail Transit-3.

Four other projects – the P1.16-billion rehabilitation of Angat power plant’s two turbines, the P5.6-billion construction of a new Orthopedic Center, the P60-billion LRT-1 Cavite extension and the P15.86-billion Ninoy Aquino International Airport Expressway 2  – are in the advanced stages of implementation.

So far, only two PPP projects have been awarded since the program was unveiled with much fanfare in late 2010.

The P1.96-billion Daang Hari- South Luzon Expressway Link Road project was the first and was awarded awarded to Ayala Corp. in December last year.

The P16.5-billion School Infrastructure Project Phase I, which involves the design, finance and construct of about 9, 300 classrooms in Luzon was won by the combined groups of BF Corp.- Riverbanks Development Corp. and Citicore Investments Holdings Inc.- Megawide Construction Corp.  last September. — VS, GMA News