SPC to appeal; Therma Visayas insists it won the bidding
The Supreme Court has nullified the sale of the 153.1-megawatt Naga power plant complex in southern Cebu to SPC Power Corp.
SPC said it will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision while winning bidder Therma Power Visayas, Inc. welcomed the ruling and insisted that it should have been awarded the contract.
“While we have not received the official notice regarding the Supreme Court’s decision, we are pleased with this development as this supports a transparent and fair bidding process that encourages open competition,” Benjamin A. Cariaso, Jr., Therma Power Visayas business unit head, said in a statement.
“We believe TPVI won the bid. Had TPVI not participated, the government would have sold its asset at a much lower price,” he added.
As of yesterday, SPC Power said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) that it has not received a copy of the Supreme Court ruling.
“However, on the assumption that the decision of the Supreme Court is what has been reported, SPC intends to file a motion for reconsideration thereof,” the company stated.
SPC Power, which has been operating the facility, was awarded the contract to purchase it after it exercised its right to top the offer of winning bidder Therma Power Visayas in March last year.
Therma Power Visayas, a subsidiary of Aboitiz Power Corp., offered P1.089 billion for the power complex.
SPC Power topped this with an offer of P1.14 billion and took control of the facility in September last year. The company created a wholly-owned subsidiary last month, the Cebu Naga Power Corp., which will build two new 150-MW coal-generating units to replace the old facility.
The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corp. held the first bidding for the facility in 2013.
The first two rounds were declared failed bids as only SPC Power showed up. Therma Visayas joined the third round and won with a bid of P1.089 billion, higher than SPC’s bid of P859 million.
In its decision, the Supreme Court nullified the right-to-top provision as well as the asset purchase agreement and land lease agreement between PSALM and SPC Power.
The SC decision stemmed from the petition of Sen. Sergio Osmeña III, asking the court to declare the right-to-top provision as illegal.
The power complex, located in Colon, City of Naga, consists of the 52.5-MW Coal Thermal Power Plant (CTPP) 1 and 56.8-MW CTPP 2 plant as well as the 43.8-MW Cebu Diesel Power Plant 1 that is composed of six 7.3-MW bunker-fed generating units.
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