Cavite-Luzon Expressway rebid deadline set in June

MANILA, Philippines – The rebidding of the Cavite-Laguna expressway (CALAX) project is set to be closed by June, a year before President Benigno Aquino III steps down from office.

“There will be a NEDA Board meeting at the end of the month and that will be one of the items in the agenda,” Cosette Canilao, PPP center executive director said Monday, January 19.

Canilao added, “It will be published next month and [Public Works] Secretary [Rogelio] Singson is looking at 4 months.”

Canilao said the timeline for the project will give bidders a window to make their proposals competitive.

Bidders of the CALAX project will undergo a revamped procurement process, after the government learned its lessons from a previous bidding mired in controversies.

To expedite the process, parties will be subject to a single-step bidding, where all their pre-qualification documents, technical, and financial proposals would be simultaneously received and read in one day, said Canilao.

CALAX is a 47-kilometer expressway project which connects Bacoor and Kawit in Cavite and South Luzon Expressway areas.

The project’s bidding process is one of the terms approved by the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) under the National Economic and Development Authority on December 22, 2014.

Part of the approved terms is the new floor price of P20.1 billion ($450.04 million*), which is the same as the submitted bid of San Miguel Corporation’s (SMC) Optimal Infrastructure Development Inc.

In contrast to the new bidding process, the previous bidding involved two stages where the SMC subsidiary was disqualified due to a non-compliant bid security.

Disqualifying the SMC unit made Team Orion, the 50-50 joint venture between Ayala’s AC Infrastructure Holdings Inc. and Aboitiz Equity Ventures, the highest bidder at P11.66 billion ($261.07 million).

But SMC said its unit was fully compliant with the bid requirements for the toll road project as ANZ bank issued a certification that the company’s bid security is valid until November 29. 2014.

San Miguel brought the case to the Office of the President, which later ruled in favor of the conglomerate and offered a rebidding.

This time, Team Orion will no longer participate in the rebidding after it expressed disappointment over Malacañang’s decision. – Rappler.com

*$1=P44.66