The Department of Transportation on Wednesday said it is looking at auctioning off the rehabilitation and development of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport by next year.
“We have communicated with the ADB [Asian Development Bank] for TOR (terms of reference) regarding the privatization of the Manila International Airport,” Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said.
The NAIA rehabilitation and development project aims to alleviate the worsening air traffic congestion at the main gateway and resolve capacity constraints by reconfiguring and renovating facilities and enhancing operation and maintenance.
The rehabilitation project also aims to broaden NAIA’s role as a key economic and tourism driver for Metro Manila and the whole Philippines, deliver capital infrastructure investment to improve the airport’s efficiency and increase its capacity to meet the growing passenger demand from the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region.
The NAIA Consortium, which includes Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc., AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp., Alliance Global Group Inc., Asia’s Emerging Dragon Corp., Filinvest Development Corp. and JG Summit Holdings Inc. earlier submitted a proposal to rehabilitate NAIA for P102 billion.
The members of the consortium, on the other hand, informed the government last July 2020 they were not confident about financing the project and pushing through with it.
Megawide Construction Corp. and partner India-based GMR Infrastructure Ltd. also submitted a proposal to rehabilitate and upgrade NAIA for $3 billion with a contract period of 18 years.
Megawide-GMR is the same group that built the new Mactan terminal facility.
