Ayala, SLEx operator seen signing road link deal soon

Conglomerate Ayala Corp. may soon seal an agreement with the operator of South Luzon Expressway (SLEx) for a planned road linkage with Ayala’s four-kilometer Daang Hari tollroad project in southern Metro Manila, which is slated to open by the fourth quarter of 2014.

Ayala Corp. managing director John Eric Francia told reporters in a recent interview that the company was hoping that the memorandum of agreement with SLEx operator South Luzon Tollway Corp., controlled by San Miguel Corp. and the Citra Group of Indonesia, would be signed before the end of the year.

Doing so would allow Ayala to move faster with the completion of the Daang-Hari road project, the first public private partnership deal under the Aquino administration, which was auctioned off in late 2011.

San Miguel president Ramon S. Ang on Wednesday confirmed plans to seal the agreement soon in a text message, noting that Ayala’s design was acceptable.

“We are prioritizing this MOA,” said Francia. He said the interchange for the tollroad, which was about 33 percent complete, was more complicated to build.

“We can go full-blast with construction as soon as the MOA is signed. It’s faster to build the main road,” Francia said.

Previous delays in the project implementation were caused by design changes. Francia said that cost assumptions had gone up for the P2-billion toll road but he declined to elaborate.

“We optimized it … we wanted the best possible engineering solution at the least cost,” Francia said.