President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should prioritize rehabilitating the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in his first one hundred days in office, an infrastructure-oriented think tank urged.

"One of the original sins of the previous administration has been the cancelation of the NAIA rehabilitation public-private partnership (PPP)," according to Terry Ridon, Infrawatch PH convenor and former House transportation committee member.

Earlier, Megawide Construction Corp. and its partner GMR Infrastructure Ltd. of India stated they "never closed their doors" on the P109 Billion rehabilitation and upgrade of NAIA and intend to pursue it should the next administration be interested in the project.

After nearly two years of failed discussions with several of the country's largest conglomerates, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) asked Megawide to consider resubmitting its 2018 proposal to rehabilitate the NAIA.

Megawide and GMR proposed to increase NAIA’s capacity from 30 million to 65 million passengers per year and build an additional taxiway and runway holding areas so planes can queue and depart immediately.

The government awarded the original proponent status (OPS) for the NAIA rehabilitation to Megawide in July, 2020.

However, just five months later, the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) revoked the OPS with "no reason given", according to the proponent.

Megawide appealed the MIAA’s decision, but the government denied its motion for reconsideration last year.

Now, "What was initially touted as a flagship project with the private sector has been reduced to a publicly-funded small-scale endeavor in the end," Ridon maintained.

"The new government should undo this blunder and restart rehabilitation of the country’s main international gateway,” he argued.

With the current limited fiscal space due to heavy borrowings in the previous government, infrastructure agencies should focus on how to work with the private sector for its new projects, according to the Infrawatch PH convenor.

“The previous government had two chances to rehabilitate NAIA: first with the MVP consortium and second with Megawide Corp," Ridon pointed out.

"Duterte’s government blew both chances for very flimsy reasons. A new government with a fresh mandate should not allow this to happen again.”

Due to the current debt burden, Marcos should focus on social programs such as cash aid, education and healthcare, he noted.

“New bridges and roads can wait until our debt burden eases in the months to come. But hungry marginalized Filipinos cannot be left by their lonesome. Government should keep spending on them while allowing the private sector to share in the burden of infrastructure building.”

The new PPPs should ensure fair and reasonable fees to end-users, as this has been the criticism on PPPs in previous administrations.

“Similar to our objections to unreasonable interest rates on foreign loans with development partners, the new government should be able to negotiate the fairest and most reasonable service fees in new PPPs. In either mode of project funding, public interest should always come first before any commercial considerations,” he concluded.