The Provincial Government of Cavite ( PCG) declared a failed bidding for the $10-billion Sangley Point International Airport (SPIA) after no proponent turned up despite the 30-day extension of the deadline for bid submission.
Although four companies purchased the P1 million bid documents for SPIA - Metro Pacific Investments Corp., China Communications Construction Co. Ltd. (CCCC), Philippine Airport Ground Support Solutions Inc. and Mosveldtt Law Office, no one submitted bids for the project on the deadline, October 20, 2021.
Cavite’s PPP (Public-Private Partnership) selection committee will reconvene in November to decide on the future of the SPIA.
The PGC issued its second invitation for new bidders for the SPIA mid-February this year, after ditching previous bid awardee, Lucio Tan's MacroAsia Corp. and China Communications Construction Co. (CCCC) before the end of January.
The PGC joint venture partner will co-develop the 1,500-hectare master-planned SPIA, providing equity investment, debt financing, and credit enhancements.
In addition, the chosen joint venture partner takes responsibility for the engineering, procurement and construction services of SPIA's land and airport development.
The SIA was being touted as an alternative to the congested Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), with quadruple the latter's capacity at 130 million passengers per annum.
But the project has long been beset with problems. It could be recalled that PGC cancelled the bid award to the consortium of MacroAsia Corp. and CCCC whose subsidiaries the US blacklisted as security risks.
The Cavite local government also began having doubts about MacroAsia's financial capability.
The tandem of MacroAsia and CCCC was the sole bidder for the airport project during the 2019 bidding. Infrastructure firms of some of the country’s largest conglomerates bought bid documents for the airport but did not participate in the bidding.
Furthermore, even the capability of the Cavite provincial government to build the $10-billion SIA has been questioned.
Last year, an infrastructure-oriented think tank invoked Congress to review the Cavite government's SIA project to determine whether conflicts exist with national agencies.
The result of the bidding for the Sangley project raises red flags on the viability of the project, as only a single proponent submitted a proposal, the think tank pointed out.