-
Submission and opening of qualification documents for the proposed P14.82-billion San Ramon Newport Project in Zamboanga City has been moved to November 20 from October 15, 2025
-
Other bid timelines have also been reset, with the deadline for the submission of bid documents now in the second week of April 2026 and the issuance of notice of award in the third week of May 2026
-
The project will be under the Build-Operate-Transfer scheme with a 35-year concession period
-
Construction is targeted next year with operations expected to start by 2030
The submission and opening of qualification documents for the proposed P14.82-billion San Ramon Newport Project (SRNP) in Zamboanga City has been moved to November 20 from October 15, 2025.
With this, the release of the list of pre-qualified bidders and the bid documents was also reset to December 10 from the original timeline of the first week of November, according to the latest bid bulletin by the project’s Pre-Qualification, Bids and Awards Committee.
The conduct of bid conference and one-on-ones will also now be in the second to third weeks of January 2026 instead of December 2025, while the deadline for the submission of bid documents will now be in the second week of April 2026 instead of the first week of March 2026.
Finally, the issuance of notice of award has been reset to the third week of May 2026 from the second week of April 2026.
The Zamboanga City Special Economic Zone Authority and Freeport (ZCSEZA) last July announced it was seeking parties to pre-qualify and bid for the design, financing, construction, operation, and maintenance of the SRNP, envisioned to be the main trade, commerce, and industrial center of the Zamboanga Peninsula (Region IX) and the first freeport in Mindanao.
The project will be under the Build-Operate-Transfer scheme, a public-private partnership model, with a 35-year concession period, inclusive of the estimated construction period, which is targeted to start next year. Operations is expected to start by 2030.
READ: P14.82B San Ramon Newport contract likely to be signed in May 2026
“We believe that the San Ramon Newport Project will open its doors for more jobs, more investment opportunities, and strategic development that can reshape the economic landscape of Zamboanga City and its entire community,” ZCSEZA PBAC chairman Reynold Pareja said in a speech during the project’s investors’ conference last August.
With a land area of around 23 hectares in Barangay Talisayan, Zamboanga City, the project includes the construction of an inland berth facility and harbor basin, a container berth and south breakwater cum south berth, continuous roll-on/roll-off ramp and north berth, port back-up areas including a road network, parking, and open areas; buildings and other support facilities, and utilities.
Access to the proposed port will not be an issue, unlike the existing Zamboanga base port (ZBP), according to Joselito Supangco, the team lead of the project’s transaction advisor, Pacific Rim Innovation and Management Exponents (PRIMEX), Inc.
The SRNP site location has direct connection to a national road (Zamboanga West Coastal Road), to be complemented by the Bypass Road Project that will link the east and west coasts of Zamboanga City.
Supangco said there is still area for further expansion of the SRNP, unlike its main competitor, ZBP, which has issues on expansion constraints and accessibility.
Current trade in ZBP is mostly domestic, but there is international trade through trips to Sandakan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China.
“So that opens the potential for international trade which is actually at present very limited…because of the capacity of the Zamboanga City port,” Supangco said, noting that due to operational constraints in ZBP, foreign shipments have to go through other ports in Cagayan De Oro and Davao.
“By providing for an international port with the state-of-the-art cargo-handling capacity and equipment, then there is actually a potential for cargo having to skip calling in other ports and go directly to San Ramon Newport,” he added.
SRNP will not be under the regulatory control of the Philippine Ports Authority. ZCSEZA has created a port authority exclusively for SRNP’s regulation, including tariff setting.
Based on estimates considering the region’s gross domestic product and other factors, such as cargoes from Zamboanga City Special Economic Zone and diverted shipments from other ports, the medium traffic forecast for SRNP is that for the year 2030, it will be handling 226,098 metric tons (mt) of domestic breakbulk cargo, 239,769 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of domestic containers, 365,073 mt of foreign cargoes, and 30,820 TEUs of foreign containers.
By 2060, or the 35th year of the concession, the port is forecasted to handle an estimated 1.849 million mt of domestic breakbulk cargoes, 1.159 million TEUs of domestic containers, 2.379 million mt of foreign cargoes, and 140,601 TEUs of foreign containers.
