Private partnership eyed in CICC makeover

THE Cebu provincial government and the Mandaue City government are considering a partnership with private investors in the repair and renovation of the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC).

Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes said the CICC board is exploring this possibility because the Capitol and Mandaue City Hall could not shell out the needed P160 million for the facility’s repair and renovation.

Cortes said the city has to stretch its budget for other priorities such as the repair of classrooms damaged by supertyphoon Yolanda.

“We are willing to find interested investors and entertain their proposals. It could be a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) project through a tripartite agreement,” he told reporters yesterday.

Cortes, Cebu Governor Hilario Davide III and representatives from the Philippine Exhibits and Themeparks Corporation (Petco) met yesterday and discussed ways to go about with repairs for CICC.

The facility is being eyed as a venue for international events in the next two years.

Also present in the closed-door meeting held inside the damaged facility were provincial administrator Mark Tolentino, Mandaue City administrator James Abadia and Davide’s new chief-of-staff, lawyer Orvi Ortega.

A technical working group (TWG) was created headed by Tolentino and Abadia. It is tasked to come up next month with proposals for the rehabilitation. The board will then pick the best option so that repairs can start by March.

Tolentino said they will have to consider all options “and if it’s worth investing all their resources.”

Earlier, Davide said the board can request government agencies such as the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Tourism (DOT) to shoulder the cost of the repairs.

The cost of the CICC repairs was initially pegged at P70 million but it increased to P160 million after renovations and improvements needed to make it a world-class facility were considered.

“We will have to build back better because if we only address the damage caused by Yolanda and the earthquake without considering that there were already issues that needed further attention, we will just be back to where we started,” he said.

Badly-damaged from last year’s earthquake in October and the supertyphoon Yolanda in November, the building is a centerpiece project of former governor Gwendolyn Garcia’s administration. It is built on the land owned by the Mandaue city government.

The facility was temporarily closed to the public when some of its exterior claddings were dislodged in the October 15 7.2-magnitude earthquake, but the need for repairs was underscored when it was picked by the national government as a possible venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Summit in 2015 and the International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) in 2016.