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Philippines
Thursday, March 28, 2024

DPWH is open to a review of past contracts – Villar

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The Department of Public Works and Highways is open to a review of contracts signed by previous governments with private companies in compliance with President Duterte’s directive to remove provisions that could harm Filipinos. 

“Of course we are always looking…  but so far (we don’t see any) onerous provisions,” Public Works Secretary Mark Villar said. 

“But definitely if we find something onerous, we will investigate. (But at this point, we haven’t discovered) onerous provisions,” he added. 

Malacañang on December 5 announced that all government public service contracts with private entities were subject to review to remove onerous provisions. 

Public Works Secretary Mark Villar

President Duterte’s order to review all contracts of the government to private entities came after an alleged “onerous” deals with Maynilad Water Services Inc.   and Manila Water Co. Inc. 

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Maynilad earlier won an arbitration case against the government. An international arbitration court ordered the government to pay the water concessionaire an amount of P3.42 billion for failure to implement tariff hike from March 2015 to August 2016. 

The court also ordered the government to pay P7.39 billion to Manila Water. 

Besides Maynilad, the government is also investigating Ayala Land Inc.’s long-term contract to develop the UP-Ayala TechnoHub project in Quezon City.

The Department of Finance last week  uncovered an “onerous” land lease contract between Chevron Philippines (formerly Caltex Philippines) and a subsidiary of the National Development Co. that allowed the former to pay a monthly rent of P0.74 per square meter on a 120-hectare property in Batangas province.

The Finance Department said the current fair market rental value in that area should be around P17.90 per sq m a month.

Duterte also ordered a review of the contract between Light Rail Transit Authority and Light Rail Manila Corp. 

LRMC in 2014 won the bidding for the P64.9-billion LRT1 Cavite Extension, one of the public-private partnership projects of the Aquino administration.

LRMC is owned by Metro Pacific Investments Corp., Ayala Corp and Macquarie Infrastructure Holdings (Philippines) Inc. 

The Transportation Department is reviewing the concession agreement with AF Payments Inc., which is also owned by MPIC and Ayala Group.

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