"These detractors’ claims are pure conjecture."
In 2003, there was a private meeting hosted by the late San Miguel Chairman Danding Cojuanco attended by the late movie icon Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ), Senator Tito Sotto, the late Senator Edong Angara, then-Senator Gringo Honasan, and Ramon S. Ang. There were others whose names I can no longer recall.
The meeting was called to plan the candidacy of FPJ for president in 2004 against then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was then running for the presidency, having finished the last three years of past President Erap Estrada, who was ousted in 2001.
The convenors of the meeting had wanted FPJ to run because of his immense popularity as an action king on the silver screen. Cojuangco was relying on his Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC). But FPJ lost to Gloria.
Ang, who was San Miguel’s president and chief operating officer, had another agenda in that meeting: He broached his idea of building, in Bulacan, an international airport (New Manila International Airport) with four runways, and later on six runways. I would employ up to one million people. Ang called the airport the most meaningful project in recent years.
“This airport will be a game-changer in the industry and in our economy,” he said.
I recall that during those years, San Miguel had plans to build an Aerocity in Cavite, but somehow Ang changed his mind and instead chose Bulacan. I also recall that then, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) was getting to be heavily congested so much so the departing and arriving flights would take 30 minutes and even more to take off and land.
Meanwhile, the new international airport in Bulacan would be built 50 kilometers northwest of Manila on 2,400 hectares in Bulacan town. This will accommodate 100 million or even more passengers. The proposed airport was hailed by everybody even by the opposition as a “game changer,” Santa Banana!
Now, with the approval of the New Manila International Airport of San Miguel by Secretary of Transportation Arthur Tugade, its construction was scheduled to begin in December 2020. At long last, we can now have an airport we can be proud of!
I have seen airports in Asia, the United States and in Europe, and even in the Middle East, and every time I see them, I become envious, wondering when we can have something similar.
With the building of an aerotropolis, Congress decided to enact a law (RA No. 11506) to exempt the airport from paying, for 10 years, all direct and indirect taxes and fees related to the project. This means, my gulay, that for 10 years the New Manila International Airport will be free from income taxes, excise taxes, documentary stamp taxes, customs duties, and go into the hands of the government. There was even a House bill converting the San Miguel airport into a freeport, like Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) to attract not only foreign investors but also local and foreign locators.
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With these good intentions, however, now come some self-proclaimed environmentalists claiming that the aerotropolis will be a “white elephant” in 50 years.
First of all there’s this newfangled claim contrary to what Ang said: that the building of the San Miguel projects doesn’t need a government guarantee like all unsolicited projects and will not cost the government a single centavo.
The flawed argument of some of these characters is that when the government exempts projects from paying taxes, that itself is already a subsidy. Non-payment of direct and indirect taxes are a subsidy.
Come on now, I don’t see the logic. How can the exemption of taxes be a subsidy when it does not cost the government a centavo? All I know is that when a project is good, and it brings benefits to the government and the people, being an unsolicited project, it deserves some kind of help by the government since the benefits are for national interest.
The campaign is based on suppositions that Bulacan in 50 years time will be underwater, and that the project will be a big failure. A big failure? This is pure conjecture!
This claim has no basis in fact; it is a mere supposition.
San Miguel will in fact have the best airport developers, like Changi in Singapore, build and design the airport. These groups must be working for some foreign interest to put down a project that will be a “game changer.”
When a “writ of Kalikasan” was filed before the Supreme Court late last year, but dismissed soon enough by the High Court, I said to myself, some people are really out to stop the project.
Perhaps, those doubting San Miguel should go back to school and relearn their logic. Their arguments are all specious and flawed. But they will not stop since I suspect they are being paid for it.
We can also easily identify the people who are helping them.
What we need in the Philippines more than ever are new gateways, like international airports. With this San Miguel project in addition to Clark, we may soon be able to compete with our neighbors in attracting tourists and foreign investors.