The Department of Transportation (DOTr) will rebid the rehabilitation of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) within the year.
"We will invite the private sector to revisit the possibility of doing a Public Private Partnership (PPP) for NAIA. Maybe, Megawide and the super consortium can participate again,” Transportation Secretary Jaime J. Bautista told reporters over the weekend.
Already, NAIA has been operating beyond its capacity of 35 million passengers per annum before the pandemic.
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The past administration sought to rehabilitate the country's major gateway and received proposals from two consortia.
The first was the NAIA Consortium, composed of top local conglomerates - Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc., AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp., Alliance Global Group Inc., Asia’s Emerging Dragon Corp., Filinvest Development Corp., JG Summit Holdings Inc. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC).
(MPIC later backed out from the consortium over unresolved issues with the government.)
The consortium submitted a P350-billion proposal to rehabilitate and expand NAIA by building a third runway, with a concession period of 35 years.
The second bidder was Megawide-GMR, a partnership of Megawide Construction Corporation and Bangalore-based GMR Infrastructure, which previously won the ₱17.5 billion operations and maintenance contract for the Mactan Cebu International Airport.
Megawide-GMR proposed to rehabilitate and upgrade NAIA for P150 billion with a contract period of 18 years.
In 2018, DOTr awarded the original proponent status (OPS) to the NAIA Consortium after the latter revised its proposal, scrapping the third runway and shortening the concession period of 15 years, for P102 billion.
However, the NAIA Consortium withdrew its unsolicited proposal in 2020, after failed discussions with the government.
The DOTr then accepted Megawide-GMR’s proposal and granted it with an OPS but the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) revoked the OPS soon after, in December 2020.
San Miguel Corp. and Philippine Airport Ground Support Solutions Inc. also submitted proposals for NAIA’s rehabilitation before the end of the Duterte administration.
Now, the new administration is keen on re-developing NAIA and discussions should start within the year, according to Secretary Bautista.
"Actually, we met some of the members of the consortium. They have given us their interest to start the discussion,” he noted.
The NAIA rehabilitation was supposed to be implemented in three phases, from 2021 to 2024 to ease air traffic congestion at the country's main gateway.