The tollway unit of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. is spending P60 billion this year to finance the construction of new expressway projects.
Christopher Daniel Lizo, chief finance officer of MetroPacific Tollways Corp., said the company’s capital expenditures for 2020 were higher than P26.2 billion last year.
Lizo said the capex would fund its four expressway projects, namely the Cebu Cordova Link Expressway Project, the Cavite Laguna Expressway Project, the C5 Southlink Project and the NLEX-SLEX Connector Road.
Lizo said the financing of these projects was completed and that “it’s a matter of availing the loan.”
The P30-billion CCLEX is an 8.5-kilometer toll road that will connect mainland Cebu from the Cebu South Coastal Road to Mactan Circumferential Road in Barangay Pilipog, Cordova.
The first segment of the P35-billion Calax Project, which starts at the Mamplasan Barrier and passes through Laguna Technopark Interchange, Laguna Boulevard Interchange all the way to Santa Rosa-Tagaytay Interchange, opened to the public last month.
The construction of the Cavite side is expected to be completed by 2022. The Cavite segment represents 27 kilometers of the 45-kilometer Cavite-Laguna Expressway.
MPTC is also constructing the P23.3-billion NLEX-SLEX Connector Road, an eight-kilometer elevated four-lane expressway extending NLEX southward from the end of Segment 10 on C3 Road Caloocan City to PUP Sta. Mesa, Manila and connecting to Skyway Stage 3 by mostly traversing the PNR rail track.
The company, meanwhile, is spending P10 billion for the construction of Cavitex C5 Southlink Project, a 7.7-kilometer, six-lane expressway project of the Manila-Cavite Toll Expressway.
MPTC posted a core net income of P5.3 billion in 2019, up 18 percent from P4.5 billion a year earlier, as a result of higher traffic on domestic roads and tariff adjustments in NLEX, SCTEX and CAVITEX, offset by lower traffic on our regional roads and higher borrowing costs.