Last of a seriesTHE past few days have provided a few answers about the ill-starred Cebu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, but they have left the country, especially the people of Cebu, with many lingering questions.On Wednesday, Dec. 18, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that the Department of Transportation (DOTr) had signed an expression of interest with the International Finance Corp. (IFC) of the World Bank Group to engage the IFC as a transaction advisor for the development of a public-private partnership (PPP) project, which would comprise the supply of the buses and the operations and maintenance (O&M) services for the Cebu BRT. The PPP will cover the entire 35-kilometer project, including the 17-km main line, 22 stations, 62 bus stops, four terminals, a depot and 18 additional kilometers of feeder lines connecting the north and south ends of the line. In an information sheet provided to reporters as background to the president's remarks — he was discussing several major infrastructure projects at the time — the projected operation date for the entire project is in mid-2027, with a PPP contractor expected to be onboarded sometime in the second quarter of 2026.Obviously, this was a complete reversal of the news from not even a week earlier, wherein it was reported that the City of Cebu had been warned by the World Bank that it must approve the plan to relocate 54 informal settler families that will be displaced by the second phase of the project by Dec. 15 or risk the project's termination. As previously discussed, the city council had balked at approving the DOTr-selected relocation site, although the rest of the plan was agreeable, and had insisted that the resettlement property acquisition and other business be handled by the department and the World Bank without holding the city responsible for it. This position was actually contrary to a 2016 agreement that the city had signed with the DOTr — and which the World Bank, at least according to Cebu's acting city administrator, had specifically cited in its warning to the city — that made the city government responsible for acquiring any needed resettlement locations.Lack of awareness?So, what happened in five or six days to claw the Cebu BRT project back from 'on the verge of being canceled' to President Marcos himself announcing it as a live, flagship infrastructure project of the national government?My first impression was that since the signing that was announced was a mere 'expression of interest' (something that didn't even warrant a mention on either the IFC or World Bank websites) and not an actual contract for transaction advisory services, the announcement may have simply been some high-level wishful thinking, or an attempt to rhetorically salvage a failing endeavor. That, however, is not the case because at the same time the president was making the announcement, the city council in Cebu was approving a resolution authorizing the purchase of some dozen or so property lots — the same ones presently occupied by the families to be resettled — for the right-of-way for the project.Nor is it even possible that the work necessary to produce the expression of interest could have happened in the short time between the World Bank team's delivery of the 'approve it or lose it' message to the City of Cebu on or about Nov. 8, and the announcement on Dec. 18. These things take weeks or months to develop, so an obvious conclusion that can be drawn is that someone in the World Bank did not know what the people in the IFC office were doing, even though they are under the same umbrella, so to speak. That is just a supposition; with neither the World Bank nor IFC country offices offering any explanation so far, we can only guess.As far as the people in Cebu are concerned, a colleague of mine whom I contacted candidly observed: 'Honestly, I wonder if anyone knows what is going on.' The most noticeable visible development in the project so far has been the dismantling of a mostly completed bus stop along the avenue that separates the Cebu Provincial Capitol from Fuente Osmeña Park at the demand of Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia. At first, everyone thought it was Governor Garcia just being her usual dramatic, style-conscious self, but as it turned out, she was properly enforcing the law protecting the integrity of heritage sites. Good on her, but it certainly seems like another rather important thing that the World Bank team, the project design lead and the construction supervisor should have known about.Lingering questionsUndoubtedly, this is not the end of this story because there are nagging questions that may take months or years to answer. With a PPP planned for the actual rolling stock and the operation of the Cebu BRT, what would become of the three large-scale loans the government took? All of them have components that are now covered by the presumed PPP project, so those loans will almost certainly need to be restructured again.As for the World Bank, there probably should be some frank soul-searching about how it manages projects, at least in this country. This is not the first time that a World Bank endeavor has landed in the briar patch (I can think of two others just off the top of my head), with outcomes that benefit no one, least of all its own credibility.And badly needed as it is, there are certainly a great many questions about cost in money and time to create the Cebu BRT is justifiable. If everything goes according to plan from here on out, the project will have taken 13 years to complete, at a cost of about P28.8 billion, or roughly P822 million per kilometer for just the infrastructure part of it. That seems excessive; whether or not it actually is will be up to the judgment of the people of Metro Cebu who will have to use it.ben.kritz@manilatimes.netBluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
