Metro Rail Transit Corporation

The Metro Rail Transit Corporation is a private consortium responsible for the maintenance of the Manila Metro Rail Transit System. It is also the original contractor for the MRT-3 project. It runs the MRT-3 in coordination with the Department of Transportation.

The contract for building and leasing for the EDSA Rail Transit III, Phase I Project was first awarded in 1992 to a consortium of international sponsors headed by Mr Eli Levin, who was involved in installing the first light rail transit system in Manila in the mid-1980s. Mr. Levin incorporated EDSA LRT Corporation Ltd. ("ELCL") in Hong Kong as the initial contractual counterparty to the DOTC. Legal and other problems beset the project through the first quarter of 1995, which were all subsequently resolved with a Supreme Court decision that asserted the validity of the Project.

In June 1995, a newly formed consortium of reputable Philippine companies purchased a majority stake in ELCL through EDSA LRT Holdings, Inc. ("ELHI"), a Philippine-registered company. It was also approximately at this same period that the consortium engaged JP Morgan to help organize the financial structure of the Project and its highly complex financing plan.

The Philippine owners obtained control of roughly 85% of ELCL's voting stock. ELHI also formed and owns in its entirety a development company ("MRT DevCo") that acquired the development and commercial rights to develop the 16-hectare depot site and in the 13 stations, as well as the right to develop the air space above the 13 stations. In December 1995, ELCL's name was changed to Metro Rail Transit Corporation Ltd. ("Metro Rail") and ELHI was correspondingly renamed MRT Holdings, Inc.

A Philippines subsidiary of Metro Rail, Metro Rail Transit Corporation ("MRTC"), was later formed for the purpose of designing, constructing, testing, commissioning, and maintaining the EDSA Rail Transit III, Phase-1 system. An Accession Undertaking and an Assignment and Assumption Agreement was executed which gave MRTC all rights and obligations to the Project agreements during the debt repayment period and establish MRTC as the Project borrowing entity. Boompanot

The BLT Agreement was signed by DOTC and Metro Rail on August 8, 1997 and amended on October 16, 1997. It constitutes a restatement of similar agreements dating back to the first such contract, which was signed on November 7, 1991. That agreement was restated on April 22, 1992, and the restated agreement was supplemented on May 6, 1993, and amended on July 28, 1994 and May 1996. Another restatement was signed on October 3, 1996. All the terms in those prior agreements were superseded by the provisions of the BLT Agreement.

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