Philippines to resume bidding of major ports
Thursday, July 9th, 2009….Sevilla also said that the privatisation of North Habor will be resumed this month after the joint venture of Metro Pacific Investment Corp. (MPIC) and Harbour Centre Port Terminal Inc. agreed to continue the bidding of the country’s premier domestic port.
Earlier, the PPA informed the joint venture about the amendments to the terms of reference (TOR) for the management of the North Harbor Modernization Project. The bidding is only open to MPIC and Harbour Centre. Read the article here.
How can two firms belonging to one consortium proceed to participate in the bidding of PPA for the North Harbor? Something strange is brewing when PPA says it will resume the bidding process with only MPIC and HCPTI as the qualified bidders. There must be a new meaning to the term “public bidding.”
The North Harbor is large enough for two operators. Why not let HCPTI and MPIC each operate one-half of the North Harbor area and let competition reign in order to streamline port operations? Establishing monopolies in port operations has resulted in overly exorbitant cargo handling and other rent-seeking services controlled by the PPA. Why has “cooking” the North Harbor privatization taken PPA more than two decades to implement? The project is so juicy so that major “booty capitalists” would not allow this project to get to the “wrong hands”.
In the meantime, forty percent of end-to-end shipping cost in the Philippines is still traceable to multiple cargo handling of items shipped. And since the returns in port operations and cargo handling is very lucrative for the port authorities and their appointed operators we could still end up having more investments in ports and cargo handling rather than in the floating assets of the maritime industry.
Look at how the government agencies have emaciated one Presidential flagship project – EO 170, the Road-RORO Transport System or RRTS. Some oversight committee ought to go over the implementation of this project in order to determine the culprits behind its complete emaciation.
If the President is not even aware of the failure of RRTS to bring down transport costs, she can only blame herself for having appointed incompetents and ass lickers to such an important undertaking. One is immediately reminded of the king and his new clothes each time the President reports on the RRTS during each SONA. ;-0
