Source: Business Mirror, 12 December 2011
Ayala Corp. and a unit of San Miguel Corp. (SMC) are expected to slug it out after they submitted their respective bids for the construction of the Daang Hari-South Luzon Expressway (Slex) Link road, the first of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Project of the Aquino administration to take off.
On Monday Rebecca Garsuta, director of the Department of Public Works and Highways PPP Center, said SMC’s South Express Link Corp. and Ayala Corp. have submitted their bids for the P2-billion project.
The joint-venture company of DM Consunji and DM Pancho, which earlier expressed its intent to bid for the project, did not submit any document to the DPWH, Garsuta said.
“We will open the bids on Friday and may send the notice of award to the winning bidder by December 22,” Garsuta said in a telephone interview. “The contract, however, may be signed next year.”
The Daang Hari-Slex Link Road project involves the construction of a new four-kilometer, four-lane toll road from the junction of Daang Reyna and Daang Hari in Las Piñas/Bacoor, Cavite, to Slex. It will go through the vicinity of Susana Heights Interchange in Muntinlupa, traversing the New Bilibid Prison Reservation.
The project will complement the Cavite-Laguna-East-West Highway and will provide additional access to the growing traffic between Las Piñas and Muntinlupa and the province of Cavite, which is one of the fastest-growing areas in Metro Manila.
The project is a strategic component of the Metro Manila Urban Expressway Network Master Plan intended to provide high-standard highways within a 200-kilometer radius of Metro Manila.
The government has been criticized for moving too slow in project implementation after it was unable to deliver on its promise of constructing at least 10 PPP projects within the year.
The government’s economic managers have revised the priority projects to be included in the PPP list several times and eventually decided that some of the projects it had announced earlier were not ready for bidding.
According to the DPWH, the projects that will be up for bidding after 2011 include the P11.79-billion, 27.5-kilometer Cavite-Laguna (Cala) Expressway, Cavite side; the P7-billion, 14.3-kilometer Cala Expressway, Laguna side; the P5.64-billion 6.8-kilometer C-5/FTI/Skyway Connector; the two phases of Central Luzon Expressway worth around P22 billion; and the P9.5-billion Slex extension to Lucena City.
Also on Monday, Transportation Secretary Manuel Roxas II said in a statement that infrastructure projects, which include the rehabilitation and construction of airports and rails, will be in “full swing” by next year.
Roxas earlier said the government will offer half-a-trillion pesos of infrastructure projects in the next five years.
(With Bloomberg News)
