Transco bidders in word war a day before auction

A day before the government's auction of the 25-year concession to operate the National Transmission Corp., competition between bidders have taken a turn for the worst. This, after Two Rivers Pacific Holdings Corp. accused rival bidder San Miguel Energy Corp. of launching a smear campaign questioning the citizenship of the partner firms behind Two Rivers. “We deplore the attempts of certain parties to gain an unfair advantage or distract attention from their own weaknesses by calling into question our qualifications to bid for Transco," said Two Rivers President Jose Ma. K. Lim. Two Rivers is a consortium between Terna-Rete Elettrica Nazionale S.p.A. of Italy and Pilipinas First Transmission Holdings Corp. Pilipinas First Transmission is a unit of Metro Pacific Investment Corp. Two Rivers is one of the bidders pre-qualified by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. to participate in the bidding for the Transco concession. Lim said law firm Perez Golangco Madrigal Andaya Law Office and San Miguel Energy Corp. have been circulating letters questioning the citizenship of Two Rivers. “Why are they even questioning the Filipino citizenship of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., when under applicable SEC and PSE rules, MPIC is clearly a Philippine national? In fact, there are several rulings that attest to MPIC’s Filipino citizenship," Lim said. The Two Rivers official said San Miguel launched the smear campaign to distract the public from some factors that may disqualify itself from the bidding. "The San Miguel Consortium has settled on insinuations and baseless allegations to deflect attention from an inconvenient truth: three San Miguel entities, specifically San Miguel Corp.-Bacolod, San Miguel Mills Inc., in Batangas, and San Miguel Packaging Specialists Inc., are either generation or distribution companies which are currently Transco's customers. This places the San Miguel Consortium in direct violation of the cross-ownership restriction under Section 45 of the EPIRA, should it win the Transco concession," Lim said. "Attacking MPIC is moot at this point, because it has no personality in this Transco bidding or within Two Rivers for that matter," Lim said. He said MPIC was itself qualified to participate, but it chose to withdraw due to the possibility that Ashmore Investment Mgt. Ltd., which holds convertible notes issued by MPIC, would convert such notes into equity of MPIC. Ashmore has power investments both locally and abroad, which might make MPIC in direct violation of government cross-ownership rules. MPIC then transferred its participation in the bid to unit Pilipinas First Transmission. Aside from Two Rivers and San Miguel (partnered with US-based TPG Aurora B.V. and TNB Pari Sdn. Bhd. of Malaysia) the other prequalified bidders are: Monte Oro Grid Resources Group and its partner State Grid of China, and Citadel Holdings, Inc., Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd. and Actis Infrastructure 2 LP. - GMANews.TV