The five regional airports previously scrapped from the pipeline of public-private partnership (PPP) projects will instead be funded by the government or by foreign assistance, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said Wednesday.

The development, and operations and maintenance of the five regional airports will instead be executed using either official development assistance (ODA) or under the General Appropriations Act (GAA), which is the yearly budget allocation approved by Congress, the DOTr said.

The five regional airports project has a combined value of P108.19 billion: the P20.26 billion Bacolod-Silay Airport, the P30.40 billion Iloilo Airport, the P40.57 billion Davao Airport, the P14.62 billion Laguindingan Airport and the P2.34 billion New Bohol Airport.

“The expansion and upgrading of the airports via the GAA make the projects cheaper as cost of money is lower, thus, more beneficial to the public,” DOTr OIC and Undersecretary for Aviation Manuel Antonio Tamayo said.

“Through this decision, we expect project completion to be faster and more efficient. Further, this would help avoid legal issues with concessionaires that may cause regrettable delays,” he added.

On Tuesday, the PPP Center announced that the DOTr has terminated the five regional airports project as a PPP venture.

In 2014, the PPP Center said it intended to bid out the bundled operation and maintenance of the airports under a single PPP project.

Among the companies that pre-qualified to make a bid for the project were:

  • Filinvest-Jatco-Sojitz Consortium (composed of Filinvest Development Corporation, Japan Airport Terminal Co. Ltd, and Sojitz Corporation)
  • GMR Infrastructure and Megawide Consortium (Megawide Construction Corporation, and GMR Infrastructure-Singapore Pte. Limited)
  • Maya Consortium (Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. and VINCI Airports SAS)
  • Philippine Airports Consortium (Metro Pacific Investments Corporation and Philippines Airport Management Company)
  • SMHC-IIAC Airport Consortium (San Miguel Holdings Corporation and Incheon International Airport Corporation)

Under the new terms approved by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) in November 2016, the five airports PPP was unbundled into five separate projects.

The DOTr said it has ordered a refund of the fees paid by the companies that prequalified for the bundled projects and the bidding prospectus for the unbundled projects “at the soonest possible time.” — Jon Viktor Cabuenas/VDS, GMA News

24 May 2017