MANILA, Philippines - The auction for the P60-billion Light Rail Transit line 1 Cavite extension project will push through in January 2013, as originally scheduled, the Department of Transportation and Communications said on Tuesday.

The date for the bidding was not pushed back despite the deadline for the submission of pre-qualification documents being rescheduled three times to encourage more bidders.

"The change in the pre-qualification dates did not delay the whole process since the submission date of the financial bids will happen sometime in January next year. In essence, the project has not been delayed by this encouragement of a few more bidders," Transportation Secretary Joseph Abaya said in a statement.

Six companies and groups have submitted pre-qualification documents on Monday but two firms were disqualified from the bidding process since they gave their papers past the 2 p.m. deadline.

Only the Light Rail Manila Consortium of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and Ayala Corp., San Miguel Corp.'s SMC Infra Resources Inc., DMCI Holdings, Inc. and MTDC-Samsung Consortium remain in the running for the bidding of the LRT-1 Cavite extension project.

The DOTC bids and awards committee on Monday has already opened the pre-qualification documents submitted by the firms to check whether they have complied with the requirements, and were later resealed. The committee will evaluate the documents and finish within 2 weeks.

Aftetr the bidding process is completed by January next year, a notice of award to the winning firm will be given in the second quarter of 2013, the DOTC said.

The LRT-1 Cavite Extension project will extend the system from its current Baclaran south-endpoint to Niyog in Bacoor, Cavite and possibly expanding further to Dasmarinas City and Imus.

Once the project is completed, it will increase the ridership of LRT-1 from the current 500,000 passengers per day to 700,000.