Villar firm seen bidding for ‘bundled’ PPP projects

The family of former Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. may join other players in bidding for “bundled” airport public private partnership (PPP) deals that the government may auction as it seeks to diversify its presence in infrastructure projects with strong real estate components.

Manuel Paolo Villar, CEO of the family’s real estate company Vista Land and Lifescapes Inc., said these projects would be pursued under privately held Primewater Infrastructure Corp. and airports, expressways and railways would be part of the mix.

Primewater is already part of the MTD consortium, which is bidding for the Light Rail Transit Line 1 extension to Cavite, which Villar noted had plenty of potential when it comes to real estate.

“For PPPs, we are trying to focus on where we are good at, which is property,” Villar said, citing potential synergies like commercial centers located along train stations.

“So airports are one of the things we are looking at, but we won’t do it alone,” he added. “Airports are a huge real estate play.”

Recently, the government indicated that it was looking at bundling airport operations contracts for Iloilo, Bacolod, Davao, Puerto Princesa (Palawan), Bohol and Laguindingan (Misamis Oriental) under the PPP scheme.

The PPP Center had said that it would meet with private sector players to help determine the optimal size of bundling.

Airports in Davao, Bacolod and Iloilo handled about 5.5 million passengers in 2011, government documents showed. The Mactan Cebu International Airport, the Philippines’s second-busiest airport, handled about 6.7 million passengers last year.

Other groups that may participate in the planned auction of bundled airports include Aboitiz Equity Ventures, JG Summit Holdings and Metro Pacific Investments as well as San Miguel Corp.

Despite this interest, bidders had said that they were interested in seeing a resolution to the issues surrounding the P17.5-billion Mactan-Cebu International Airport deal, the government’s first airport PPP.

The awarding of the project, originally scheduled on Jan. 6 this year, had been delayed as the Filinvest group, which gave the second-highest offer, raised various issues, including an alleged conflict of interest violation, against frontrunner Megawide-GMR.

Megawide-GMR offered a P14.4-billion bid against the P14 billion offer of Filinvest-Changi. The main conflict-of-interest allegation, being contested by GMR-Megawide, involves a key official of Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad, which is a partner of a rival consortium for the Cebu airport deal, who is also a director of two airports that GMR operates in India.