The government said Wednesday it is not worried about the pullout by big conglomerates from their bid to upgrade and rehabilitate the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, as two other potential proponents are willing to take over the project.
Cosette Canilao, chief operating officer of Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc., one of the members of NAIA Consortium, said her group was no longer interested to pursue the project.
The P102-billion NAIA rehabilitation project was proposed by NAIA Consortium that 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.
Metro Pacific Investments Corp. earlier backed out from the consortium over unresolved issues with the government.
The members of the consortium sent a letter to the National Economic and Development Authority on July 6 informing the agency that they were not confident about financing the project and pushing through with it.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said in a virtual press briefing after the Pre-SONA forum that the Transportation Department was in talks with two more potential proponents for the NAIA project.
“These two other proponents are willing to get into agreement with the government which are very similar to the terms of agreement with Clark airport,” Dominguez said.
“We’re not worried about it. We believe these other two proponents step up to the plate here,” he said, although he did not disclose the identity of the interested parties.
Earlier, Megawide Construction Corp. and partner India-based GMR Infrastructure Ltd. submitted a proposal to rehabilitate and upgrade NAIA for $3 billion with a contractperiod of 18 years. Megawide-GMR is the same group that built the new Mactan terminal facility.
The NAIA 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. This will allow for the accommodation of more traffic.
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.
It was supposed to be implemented in three phases from 2021 to 2024.
