Conglomerate San Miguel Corp. is in advanced stage of negotiations with the group of businessman Manuel Pangilinan for a possible joint venture in the development of a $10-billion international airport.
San Miguel president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said in an interview at the sidelines of the company’s annual stockholders meeting the final terms of the joint venture partnership remained to be finalized.
Ang said both parties would wait for the government to issue guidelines for the airport bidding.
He said aside from the airport project, San Miguel was also in talks with Pangilinan’s group for other big ticket projects the government planned to bid out in the future, including tollways and railway projects.
Pangilinan is the chairman of PLDT Inc. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp.
“Between the two of us, we want to cooperate more. We are willing to cooperate in whatever way,” Ang said.
San Miguel in 2014 proposed to build a $10-billion modern international airport on a 1,600-hectare reclamation site along Manila Bay over a period of five to seven years.
The planned airport project will have four runways capable of handling 150 million passengers annually and can accommodate 250 takeoffs and landings per hour, up from Ninoy Aquino International Airport’s current capacity of 40 takeoffs and landings per hour.
The Transportation Department, however, opted to look for alternative sites for the new international gateway.
Ang said the proposed airport could be done in phases, with the initial phase composed of a terminal with 50-million passenger capacity and two runways costing $2 billion.
Meanwhile, Ang said all parties in the P70-billion deal to sell the telecommunications assets of San Miguel to PLDT and Globe Telecom had complied with the rules of the Philippine Competitive Commission.
“As far as I am concerned we have complied. We did not hide anything and we have submitted all documents. We deem it as complied,” Ang said.
The PCC on Monday said it denied the initial filing of PLDT and Globe, which was found to be defective and deficient.
It said while the two companies made new submissions consisting of new materials not previously produced in their initial notice to the PCC, the two parties continued to deny that these constituted a refiling.
