Megawide Construction Corp. said Wednesday Indian infrastructure partner GMR Infrastructure Ltd. of India agreed to infuse a 40-percent equity in the rehabilitation and development of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport after the National Economic and Development Authority raised concerns over the consortium’s capability to finance the project.
Megawide said in a disclosure to the stock exchange that GMR, its equity partner in Mactan-Cebu International Airport, was one of the leading and largest airport operators in the world.
“They are currently operating and/or developing key international gateways such as the Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport, GMR Goa International Airport and the Crete International Airport in Greece. GMR’s airport assets serve more than 100 million passengers per year,” Megawide said.
It said its financial fundamentals were “strong and it possesses the capability to fully finance” all proposed phases of the NAIA rehabilitation project.
“Megawide’s prudent financial management plan ensures all phases of a complex infrastructure build are fully financed under a project financing program,” it said.
Megawide said it planned to deliver a world-class transformation of the NAIA complex in a transparent manner with the highest degree of excellence and government procurement compliance
The government has yet to award the contract to operate and rehabilitate NAIA to Megawide and GMR, which secured the original proponent status on July 15.
Megawide earlier offered to develop NAIA for $3 billion with a contract period of 18 years on March 1, 2018. Its proposal was two weeks behind the proposal of NAIA Consortium which eventually backed out.
The Megawide proposal, however, did not include building a third runway. Even without it, Megawide estimated that it could increase the terminal capacity to 72 million against the competitor’s estimate of just 65 million.
Megawide said the solutions would increase airfield capacity to 950 to 1,000 aircraft movements per day, representing 30-percent to 35-percent increase from the current 730 aircraft movements a day.