The Philippine National Construction Corporation (PNCC) said on Saturday that it was able to pay the government a total of P420 million in concession fee from 2008 to 2010, as the operator of the South Luzon Expressway.

PNCC spokesperson lawyer Chat Zamora said the payment, which constituted 16 percent of the total collections in South Luzon Expressway during the interim period, was remitted to the national treasury.

The rest of the collections, he said, went to the operations and maintenance including repairs of the SLEX and the separation pays for the retrenchment of more than a thousand employees affected by the turn-over of SLEX operations from PNCC to the Malaysian-backed South Luzon Tollway Corporation in May this year.

Zamora said the company paid government the concession fee despite absence of governing guidelines on the obligations of PNCC under the Toll Operation Certification (TOC), which authorized the PNCC to act as interim operator of SLEX.

“PNCC is a corporation organized for the purpose of tollway operations and management, it’s the main business of this corporate entity, and it’s not a collecting agency of the government,” PNCC President and CEO Ma. Theresa Defensor clarified.

Earlier, PNCC said that its collection of toll fees at the SLEX after the expiration of its franchise on April 30, 2007 is legal. Zamora said PNCC reiterated its full cooperation in clarifying issues linked to the toll collections in a comprehensive report submitted to Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima.

The report contained documents that show PNCC had turned over to the national government, through the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB), the SLEX facilities, equipment and toll operations three days before its franchise expired, as contained in Presidential Decree 1113.