Conglomerate Ayala Corp. wants to focus on the bidding of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport redevelopment project and is not interested in other airport deals, a top executive said Wednesday.
Ayala Infrastructure Holdings president and chief executive Rene Almendras said the company was not keen on participating in the bidding of five provincial airport projects because it wanted to focus on the country’s main gateway.
“We are getting ready for the bigger one which is the Naia. Let the others fix the domestic airports. But you still need to fix the main airport and expand its capacity,” Almendras said.
Almerdras said the group already formed a consortium that would include foreign and local partners to bid for Naia.
Almendras said the Naia redevelopment was a critical project that needed to be fixed.
“There is a bigger problem in Naia. You need to fix Naia. Even if you increase the capacity of all the domestic airports, the additional flights would have nowhere to go, if we would not fix Naia,” Almendras said.
“We are not saying the [unbundled airport projects] are bad investments. They’re all good. They’re all nice, interesting and all that. It’s just that we have to choose. We don’t want to be all over the place because we want to be focused,” he said.
The Transportation Department on Tuesday opened the bidding for five regional airports to other groups aside from the five consortiums that passed the qualifications set by the previous administration.
The five provincial airports include the P20.26-billion Bacolod-Silay International Airport, the P30.4-billion Iloilo International Airport, the P14.62-billion Laguindingan Airport, the P2.34-billion New Bohol (Panglao) Airport and the P40.57-billion Davao International Airport.
The Aquino administration earlier pre-qualified Maya Consortium led by Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Philippine Airports Consortium of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., San Miguel Holdings Corp.-IIAC Airport Consortium, GMR-Megawide Consortium and Filinvest-JATCO-Sojitz Consortium for the project.
Aboitiz Equity teamed up with Vinci Airports of France to form Maya Consortium, while San Miguel Holdings Corp. tapped Incheon International Airport Corp. to create SMHC-IIAC Airport Corp.
Metro Pacific teamed up with Aeroports de Paris Management SA, while Filinvest tapped Japan Airport Terminal Corp. and Sojitz Corp
Meanwhile, Ayala Infrastructure said it planned to submit big-ticket unsolicited proposals to the Duterte administration to improve the country’s infrastructure projects.