North Luzon Expressway

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Manila North Tollways Corporation (MNTC) was originally a joint-venture between First Philippine Infrastructure Development Corporation (60%), Transroute International of France (20%) and the state owned PNCC (20%). FPIDC was itself a joint-venture between First Philippine Holdings Corporation (FPHC) and Benpres Holdings. On Nov. 13, 2008, Metro Pacific Investments Corporation (MPIC) completed the acquisition of shares representing approximately 100% of the outstanding capital stock of FPIDC from First Philippine Holdings Corporation and Benpres Holdings. As of Dec. 31, 2008, MNTC was composed of MPIC (67%), Leighton Holdings Ltd of Australia (17%), Egis Projects SA (10%) and the Philippine National Construction Corporation (4%). The 30 year concession began in 2000. The project for the expansion and rehabilitation of the tollway linking Luzon to Cagayan Province is divided into three phases: the first phase comprises the rehabilitation and expansion of the existing North Luzon Expressway (NLE), the second phase involves the construction of the northern beltway linking Quezon City to Malabon; the third phase includes the construction of a new road linking North Luzon Expressway to Subic. The construction works started in 1996 and an 8.8 km road connecting Subic to Tipo (a portion of phase one) was inaugurated in Oct. 1996, with toll operations starting in May 1997. The works on the rehabilitation and extension of the existing North Luzon Expressway started in July 1998. The completion date had been set to June 2001. The project, estimated to cost $1.2 billion had originally obtained financing in January of 1996 with a 30 year contract period. However, the events of the financial crises greatly altered the sponsors and the financing of the project. Operational responsibility for NLE has the same sponsor group but with different compositions: FPIDC (46%), Egis (34%) and PNCC (20%). Phase one of the project cost approximately $377.5m; financial closure was reached in July 2001. In 2001, MIGA provided guarantees totaling $87 million to EGIS for its equity investment and to a syndicate of banks led by West LB for a loan to the Manila North Tollway Corporation. IFC and EFIC put up institutional tranches of $45m and $55m, respectively. ADB pledged a $45m direct loan and a $25m B loan in syndication. JP Morgan put the B loan out with a club syndicate along with a $47.5 million MIGA/SEK covered loan, a $35m COFACE tranche and a $7.5m letter of credit facility. The remaining US$120m will be equity financed. The project won the Project Finance Asia-Pacific deal of the year 2001. Financing for the remaining two phases has not been reached. http://www1.ifc.org/ar2002/pdf/FY2002Commitments.pdf http://www.miga.org/screens/projects/guarant/regions/ap/egis.htm