The government disclosed that the bidding for the country’s first-ever prison Public Private Partnership (PPP) Project has been set in May 2015.
In the recent invitation to prequalify and bid issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the government said the new penal facility to be built through the P50.11-billion Regional Prison Facilities project will be in Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija.
“It [the project] envisions to create a ‘humane’ prison condition that will provide adequate living spaces, facilities, and address the basic needs of inmates incarcerated in the existing penal facilities,” the PPP Center said.
The new facility will house some 26,880 inmates and staff from the New Bilibid Prison and the Correctional Institution for Women, as well as housing and administrative buildings. It will also contain rehabilitation facilities, such as for sports, work and religious activities.
The project will be implemented using a build-transfer-maintain (BTM) contractual arrangement, where a private entity will undertake the financing and construction of the infrastructure facility.
After the facility is completed, the private entity will turn over the facility to the DOJ. The agency will then pay the private firm its total investment, plus a reasonable rate of return, for undertaking the project.
The government also said the maintenance of the facility will also be granted to the private-sector firm on behalf of the DOJ based on specifications contained in the
BTM agreement.
In 2011 PPP Center Executive Director Cosette Canilao said undertaking a PPP for the prison facilities to allow the government to also undertake a PPP for the utilization of the present location of the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City.
Mark Rathbone of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Professional Advisors Inc. said prisons is one of the easiest PPP projects to undertake. He said New Zealand’s first PPP was to privatize a prison.
The United Kingdom pioneered PPP in the 1980s, when it first developed the program
to fund school and hospital projects. The
UK’s PPP portfolio has since expanded to
include many other sectors.
The government aims to focus on the PPP and the need to further strengthen investor and the public’s confidence in the revised PPP framework.