Michael Medina
Online news editor
OZAMIZ CITY: NOW that everything is in place, all that is needed is to build it, Gov. Loreto Ocampos told Misamis Probe in an interview.
“President Gloria wants me to finish the bridge by 2010,” he further said.
Online news editor
OZAMIZ CITY: NOW that everything is in place, all that is needed is to build it, Gov. Loreto Ocampos told Misamis Probe in an interview.
“President Gloria wants me to finish the bridge by 2010,” he further said.
Ocampos led provincial officials last July 11 in billeting the President during her arrival here, to grace the reopening of the newly renovated Benigno Aquino Airport in Gango and to witness the signing of the Panguil Bay Bridge Consortium (PBBC).
With the bridge’s general engineering already finished and the preparation of its detailed engineering design finished, the governor was confident work will be underway before this year ends.
August last year, a team of engineers from the DPWH’s BOT Project Management Office visited the project’s proposed site of the bridge in Silanga, Tangub City.
Ocampos acknowledged the DPWH engineers for their efforts in having the bridge pursued and for incorporating it in the Medium-Term Public Investment Plan (MTPIP).
President Arroyo has approved P900-million as government counterpart to the P2.67-billion project. Also approved was the P214-billion infrastructure development allocation for Mindanao for the years 2007-2010; among this the P300-million road network that would connect Tangub City and Bonifacio to Don Victoriano, Misamis Occidental.
Once finished, the average toll fee would be P355 for cars and jeeps.
In a meeting between officials of the two provinces led by Ocampos and then Gov. Imelda Quibranza Dimaporo of Lanao del Norte, mayors Jennifer Tan of Tangub and Eduardo Mansueto of Tubod, the creation of the Panguil Bay Bridge Consortium (PBBC) was decided, which will borrow money from the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
A subsidiary of the World Bank, IFC offers fixed and variable rate loans to private sector projects called A-loans. IFC operates on a commercial basis, investing exclusively for-profit projects and charges market rates for its products and services.
The loans typically have maturities of 7 to 12 years at origination.
According to its website, projects eligible for IFC funding must meet a number of criteria. It must be in the private sector; be technically sound; have good prospects of being profitable; benefit the local economy and; be environmentally and socially sound and satisfying to IFC environmental and social standards as well as those of the host country.
As a private consortium, Ocampos explained that the PBBC would construct the Panguil Bay Bridge using aid-up capital from its members and the IFC, collect toll fees to manage and maintain the bridge.
Ocampos, in an interview last year, said he withdrew their attempts for foreign financial investors from Japan, China and Spain because the said countries asked for “sovereign guarantees.”
Sovereign guarantees are given by host governments to assure project lenders that the government will take certain actions or refrain from taking certain actions affecting the project.
Presently, the PBBC incorporators are governors Ocampos and Khalid Dimaporo, who replaced her mother in the last elections, vice-governors Francisco Paylaga of Misamis Occidental and Irma Umpa Ali of Lanao del Norte, mayors Tan and Mansueto and probably, selected members of the provincial board of the two provinces and members of the city and municipal councils of Tangub and Tubod.
A resolution authorizing the incorporation of the PBBC, appointment of its incorporators and the its representative who will contract a loan with the IFC have already been approved, as well as the final signing of the consortium which was witnessed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last July 11 when she visited this city.
Once approved, IFC will extend P1.78-billion for PBBP, with the rest shouldered by members of the PBBC as paid-up capital, using the P900-million Arroyo set aside as seed money for the project.