Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. is studying the possibility of building a toll bridge expressway connecting Cordoba in Cebu province to Bohol province for P90 billion, a top executive said over the weekend.
“Gov. Gwen [Garcia] has asked us to look at building a bridge from Cordoba to Bohol … That’s a P90-billion project,” said MPTC chairman Manuel Pangilinan.
“The key there is really financing, because it’s a very big project for us. Of course, where [will we] get the funding for that. We still have to conduct a feasibility study because if the tariffs are so high, nobody will use it,” he said.
MPTC president and chief executive Rodrigo Franco said the company would look for ways to make the project viable.
“Viability is the issue because the project cost is high. We’re looking for ways to make that viable. If there are ways in the financing side to make it viable, then we will look at it,” he said.
Cebu Cordova Link Expressway Corp., a subsidiary of MPTC, recently completed the construction of the P31-billion Cebu-Cordoba Link Expressway—an 8.5-kilometer bridge linking Cebu City with the municipality of Cordova and outlying towns of Cebu province.
The bridge began commercial operations on April 30 and is expected to accommodate about 50,000 vehicles a day, easing the traffic in two old bridges—the Marcelo Fernan Bridge and the Mandaue-Mactan Bridge.
The average vehicles entries in CCLEX now reached 6,776. CCLEX, highlighted by iconic crosses on top of the twin pylons of the cable-stayed main bridge over the Mactan Channel, is MPTC’s first toll road project outside Luzon.
CCLEX, the third link to Mactan Island from Cordova town to mainland Cebu through Cebu City’s South Road Properties, has a design speed of 80 kilometers per hour and a navigational clearance or height of 51 meters to allow large vessels to pass underneath the bridge.
MPTC earlier reported a core net income of P2.51 billion in the first half, or 33 percent higher than last year, with traffic surpassing pre-pandemic levels across all roads and higher contribution from international investments.