The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has assured the public that the hiked premium-bid requirement for the P55-billion Cavite-Laguna Expressway (Calax) deal will not result in higher toll rates for the proposed thoroughfare.

“The public is protected. We have already established the base or initial toll—something that the winning bidder cannot adjust,” said Ariel C. Angeles, DPWH Public-Private Partnership (PPP) officer in charge.

Angeles was responding to a BusinessMirror report on Friday that quoted business chambers as saying that the project’s rebidding —which required at least P20.1 billion in premium payment—places the consumers at the losing end.

Angeles explained that the base toll was “at a fair price” relative to the project cost. The public, he added, is also protected by the concession agreement, which requires bidders to seek regulatory approval before imposing toll increases.

This places most of the risk to the winning concessionaire.

“If the private sector fails to make money out of it, then it’s their
problem,” he said.

Angeles also announced that his office already opened the technical bids of San Miguel Corp. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp. for the project on Friday. With this, results of the evaluation of the two bidders’ technical proposals will be out by Friday.

“The process shouldn’t take that long. It’s quite impossible that they didn’t comply with the rules,” he told the BusinessMirror in a phone interview. “I believe that they have done their assignments already.”

Earlier, business chambers scored the government for “milking” money from investors by rebidding
the Calax deal with a high-premium bid requirement.

Industry players said the unnecessary rebidding created a suction in the government’s thrust to improve the quality of infrastructure in the Philippines.

The government moved to place the deal under a rebidding to increase its supposed revenues from the premium offer of bidders. It placed a P20.1-billion floor price for the auction, reflective of disqualified bidder San Miguel’s alleged proposal.

Optimal Infrastructure Deve-lopment Inc. sought President Aquino’s intervention, after the DPWH decided to disqualify the firm from the auction due to a technicality.

The “minor” technicality involved a defective bid security on the part of Optimal. It was four days short of the required cover period that could result in a few millions of pesos in losses should the concessionaire fail to deliver the infrastructure above board.

Team Orion of Ayala Corp. and Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. topped the original auction with a P11.33-billion offer on top of the project cost. Metro Pacific trailed behind by a hairline difference.

This result outraged disqualified bidder Optimal, whose chairman is the uncle of President Aquino. It sought to overturn the results of the auction—to which it claims to have topped with a P20.1-billion premium offer—by taking its battle to Malacañang.

It took the government quite sometime before it finally decided on the matter. Several petitions from Team Orion and Optimal reached the PPP Center, the Palace, and the public works department, both seeking to contradict each other’s position.

The two parties, however, came to a consensus that the road network is a pressing necessity, hence, Mr. Aquino should come to a conclusion.

He did. The Chief Executive called for the rebidding, voiding the clean and transparent tender that was launched in 2013.

This move received both the cheers and jeers of investors.

Business group—such as the Makati Business Club, the American Chamber of Commerce, the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines—called the
rebid an inopportune and ill-
advised decision.

The effect, they said, is now manifested by the decrease in the number of Calax bidders from four to two. 

Source: Business Mirror