The Department of Transportation plans to offer the operations of four major airports under the public private partnership program, a top official said over the weekend.
“We will review it [regional airports]. PPP should continue, and we will invite the private sector to offer and support our PPP projects,” Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said.
Bautista said the airports under review for PPP are the development, operations and maintenance of the New Bohol (Panglao), Davao, Iloilo and Kalibo airports.
The Duterte administration earlier cancelled the development, operations and maintenance of the Bacolod-Silay, Davao, Iloilo, Laguindingan and New Bohol (Panglao) airports under the PPP procurement process and, instead, decided to pursue the projects through official development assistance or general appropriations.
The Regional Airport PPP Projects were originally approved under a bundled PPP structure by the National Economic and Development Authority-Investment Coordination Committee and the NEDA Board. The board approved the unbundling of the five airports in November 2016.
Among the companies that earlier expressed interest in the privatization of airports are the Aboitiz Group, Dennis Uy’s Chelsea Logistics Holdings Corp. and Udenna Infrastructure Corp., Philippine Airport Ground Support Solutions Inc., Mega7 Construction Corp. and Prime Asset Ventures Inc. of the Villar Group.
The DOTr also mulls over the bidding for the development and rehabilitation of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, which was scrapped by the past administration.
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.
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 informed the government in July 2020 that 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 in Cebu.