ADB and AIIB Wrote the Bridge Loan. The Bidder List Reads Almost All Chinese.
The Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge runs on Manila-backed international bidding, not a China Eximbank line, and the firms winning packages are largely Chinese while the relocation timeline trails the pilings.
The three Philippine railway projects that China Eximbank abandoned when their loan applications lapsed, the Subic-Clark line, the PNR South Long Haul to Bicol, and the Mindanao Railway, get a lot of airtime. The Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge is a different beast, and worth understanding on its own terms.
This one never carried a China Eximbank loan. The Asian Development Bank approved $2.11 billion for it in 2023, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank added roughly P64 billion in May 2024, and the Philippine government covers the remaining $664 million or so. The interesting questions here are not about a collapsed loan. They are about who gets paid, who wins the packages, and in what order.
The compensation clock runs on its own schedule
Right-of-way settlements are supposed to come before displacement, not after. A project of this scale crosses coastal barangays in Mariveles, Bataan and Naic, Cavite, where families along the alignment fall under the resettlement provisions that multilateral lenders like ADB require for financed builds.
Displacement advocates have flagged the same pattern across major builds for years: relocation gets described in forward-looking language while the actual payout and housing lag the groundbreaking. A bridge on schedule is not the same as families made whole on schedule, and the second clock rarely gets the press releases the first one does.
The procurement moved, and the shortlist is telling
There was no re-tender after a loan died. This is the project's original packaged procurement, and it has moved. DPWH received eight bidders for Phase 1 in September 2025, and its bids and awards committee recommended awarding the P3.07-billion Package 2 in a resolution dated Nov. 13, 2025.
Look at who won that recommendation: a consortium of China Wu Yi Co. Ltd., Jinan Urban Construction Group, and CM Pancho Construction. Chinese firms dominate the bidder field even without a Chinese loan behind the project, because ADB and AIIB financing runs through international competitive bidding, and Chinese contractors have the scale and the pricing to win those rounds.
Who builds the 32 kilometers
The bridge stretches 32.15 kilometers from Barangay Alas-asin in Mariveles to Barangay Timalan Concepcion in Naic, with two navigation spans of 900 and 400 meters. That is a long structure over Manila Bay, and the packages that cross the water are the hard, expensive ones.
As of early August 2026, DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon said work on some packages has begun while the critical Manila Bay packages sit close to award. Completion is expected to run past the end of President Marcos's term in 2028, which means the contracts signed now outlive the administration that cut the ribbons for them.
The part that gets less attention
Strip away the summit optics and the story is simple. Two multilateral lenders financed a bridge, Chinese contractors are winning the packages through open bidding, and the coastal families along the alignment in Mariveles and Naic are the piece least likely to appear in the next progress update.
The award recommendations will keep coming. The Manila Bay spans will get their contractor. And whether the relocation kept pace with the pilings is the line item no groundbreaking photo will ever show.
