LIKE an errant student who has spent most of the exam period doodling on the back of his test paper and is trying to rush to complete it before time expires, President BS Aquino 3rd’s attempt to generate some kind of respectable record of infrastructure development – a globally-recognized shortcoming of his government – in the last three months of his term appears headed for a completely unsurprising failure.

On Monday, the bidding deadline for the P122.8 billion Laguna Lake Expressway Dike project under Aquino’s much-heralded but not especially productive public-private partnership (PPP) program came and went with none of the three qualified bidders submitting a bid. With the bid failure, the project is now deemed “terminated.” No, it’s not completely dead, but back to square one. If it is resurrected later, the entire process of qualification, bidding, and award will have to be restarted from the very beginning.

Premium + Digital Edition

Ad-free access


P 80 per month
(billed annually at P 960)
  • Unlimited ad-free access to website articles
  • Limited offer: Subscribe today and get digital edition access for free (accessible with up to 3 devices)

TRY FREE FOR 14 DAYS
See details
See details