Evaluation of Mactan airport bids to take 20 days

OFFICIALS involved in the bidding of the P17.5 billion Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) expansion project were scheduled to finish reviewing the documents of all seven bidders last night.
In a text message sent to Cebu Daily News, MCIA general manager Nigel Paul Villarete said the Public Bidding and Awards Committee (PBAC) will direct the Technical Working Group to conduct the bid evaluation.
“Hopefully within 20 days (bid evaluation) after which the preferred bidder shall be announced,” Villarete said.
He said review of the bidding documents began at 2:30 p.m. and they was supposed to finish at 6 p.m. last night.
The bidders for the airport expansion project include MPIC-JGS Consortium; Ayala Corp. and Aboitiz Equity Ventures partnership – AAA Airport Partners, Gotinanun-led Filinvest Development Corp.; San Miguel Corp.; Lopez-led First Philippine Holdings; Henry Sy’s Premier Airport Group, and Megawide Construction Corp.
Melanie Ng, private sector representative of the MCIAA Board said there were 140 people present in yesterday’s opening of boxes that contained the bidding documents.
They include MCIA board members, officials of the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC), the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center of the Philippines and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
The DOTC earlier allowed the participation of South Korea’s Incheon International Airport Corp., the foreign partner of San Miguel Corp.
The company operates a world class airport terminal in Seoul, South Korea.
A rival consortium led by Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and the Gokongwei family’s JG Summit Holdings voiced concern that Incheon may have received advance information on the airport expansion project.
Taxes
Metro Pacific chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan previously said a group named Korea Airports was tapped by the national government to craft the feasibility study and master plan of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport in 2010.
The bid submissions were approved by the DOTC  after Malacañang approved five revisions to the terms of the Mactan-Cebu Airport deal, the first airport project to be auctioned off under the PPP program.
In a Nov. 21 memorandum, the DOTC said the new terms allowed for the extension of the concession period from 20 years to 25 years, the transfer of operations and maintenance of the aprons from grantors to the concessionaire, and flexibility on the implementation of capacity augmentation.
The two last items were the sharing of real property taxes and increasing the duration prohibiting the establishment of competing airports to 25 years.
It was previously set at 10 years or when the airport reaches a capacity of 15 million passengers, whichever comes later.
The DOTC said the participation of all seven bidders was proof of the private sector’s continued interest in public-private-partnership, a “keystone program” of the Aquino administration.
The MCIA expansion required construction of a new world-class international passenger terminal building with a capacity of eight million passengers a year.
The MCIA has an annual capacity of 4.5 million passengers but it booked around 6.77 million last year. With an Inquirer report