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THE
National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) board
has deferred making its final decision on the fate of
the Metro Rail Transit-7 (MRT-7) project to next year.
Neda
acting director general Augusto Santos said the board,
chaired by President Arroyo, opted to evaluate further
the counterproposal made by the project’s proponent, a
consortium led by Universal LRT Corp.
“Government needs to study further the counterproposal
of the proponent. If the government finds the
counterproposal acceptable, the project will be
submitted to the Neda board for final approval, probably
in January,” Santos said in an interview.
Santos
said some details of the counterproposal has been
changed, particularly on the real-estate development
aspect of the project.
The Neda
official said that the new counterproposal states that
if the proponent is unable to develop the area in San
Jose del Monte at the planned site for the final
passenger station of MRT 7, the land will be
“confiscated” by the government.
Santos
said this will give the government the right to bid out
the project of developing the land into a mixed-use
development complete with a residential area and a
commercial area with a mall.
Earlier,
the government asked that the counterproposal of the
consortium include step-in rights that would allow the
government to develop the land.
The
project costs $1.235 billion and will be placed under a
25-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme while the
real-estate component is worth $2.5 billion. The
real-estate project will be located in a 200-hectare
area in barangay Tungkong Mangga.
As a BOT
project, the MRT-7 project will not involve any form of
guarantee from the government.
The
Universal LRT Corp. will build the MRT-7, a 22-kilometer
mostly elevated rail track from North Ave. in Quezon
City to San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, including a
22-kilometer six-lane access road from San Jose del
Monte to the North Expressway Tollgate in Bocaue,
Bulacan.
The
consortium includes Siemens AG of Germany; Alstom Corp.
of France; China National Technical Import and Export
Corp.; EL International Holdings of Hong Kong; Earth
Tech of Tyco International USA; Premier Gold of Japan;
Redford Assets Ltd. of the SM Group; EEI Corp. of the
Yuchengco Group; Penta Capital Management Corp., Merlin
Pacific Capital Inc., TCGI Engineers and private
investors such as George Go and former finance secretary
Roberto de Ocampo. |
