The Transportation Department has deferred by more than a month the submission of bids for the P19-billion Davao Sasa Port Modernization Project amid opposition by the Davao City council.
Transportation Undersecretary for planning Rene Limcaoco said the bid submission date was moved to Feb. 26 from Jan. 11, 2016.
Limcaoco said the agency pushed back the schedule because of numerous requests from pre-qualified bidders and to give them more time to conduct technical, financial and legal due diligence.
The Transportation Department earlier pre-qualified Asian Terminals Inc., International Container Terminal Services Inc., Bollore Africa Logistics, Singapore-based Portek International Pte. Ltd. and San Miguel Corp. in the port project.
The Sangguniang Panglungsod ng Davao, however, issued a resolution stopping the Sasa port bidding because of “the irregular procedure as well as the various questions raised against the Sasa Port Modernization project now being bid out without prior consultation and expressed approval of the local government as provided for by the Local Government Code.”
The City Council resolution cited Section 2 (c) of Republic Act 7160, or the Local Government Code, which provides that national agencies and offices should “conduct periodic consultations with appropriate local government units, non-governmental and people’s organizations and other concerned sectors of the community before any project or program is implemented in their respective jurisdictions.”
The resolution also based its objection on Section 27 of the same law, which states that “no project or program shall be implemented by government authorities unless the consultations mentioned in Section 2 (c) and 26 hereof are complied with, and prior approval of the sanggunian concerned is obtained.”
The Transportation Department or the PPP Center did not conduct any prior consultation regarding the bidding for the port project, according to the Davao City council.
The winning bidder will build a new apron and linear quay, expand the back-up area, container yards and warehouses and install ship-to-shore cranes and rubber-tyred gantry.
The government said once the first phases of the project were completed by 2018, the Sasa Port would be comparable to the country’s top ports in terms of speed and quality of service, cutting down cargo unloading from three days to three hours by using modern ship-to-shore cranes and port operating systems.
Davao thrives in banana exports, being the second largest exporter of the fruit in the world. A study conducted by International Finance Corp. and the Development Bank of the Philippines showed that container traffic in the Davao area would increase by at least 6 percent annually over the next 25 years.
The government said without the added capacity of a modernized Sasa Port, there would be a strong chance of shortage in port capacity in Davao Bay, which might affect small banana growers.
Apart from added capacity, the proximity of the Sasa Port to banana plantations will help growers save at least P8,000 in trucking costs per delivery.
Sasa wharf currently has a capacity of 700,000 twenty-foot equivalent units, but the Philippine Ports Authority expects the volume to rise to 1.2 million TEUs in the next five years.
