5 groups vie for P108-B airports PPP

THE DEPARTMENT of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) has cleared five out of six groups seeking to participate in its next big-ticket public-private partnership (PPP) project, the auction of airport contracts for the Bacolod-Silay, Iloilo, Davao, Laguindingan and New Bohol air gateways.

In a bid bulletin issued Friday, the department said it prequalified consortiums led by Filipino conglomerates and their international partners vying for the contracts valued together at about P108 billion.

Those that made the cut were San Miguel Corp. and South Korea’s Incheon International Airport (SMHC-IIAC Airport Consortium); Metro Pacific Investments Corp. with a unit of Aéroports de Paris and TAV Havalimanlari Holdings A.S. (Philippine Airports Consortium); Aboitiz Equity Ventures with VINCI Airports (Maya Consortium); Megawide Construction Corp. and India’s GMR Infrastructure (GMR Infrastructure and Megawide Consortium), and Filinvest Land Inc., Japan Airport Terminal Corp. and Sojitz Corp. (Filinvest-Jatco-Sojitz Consortium), the DOTC said.

A sixth group, Union Equities-Acsa Consortium, was disqualified by the DOTC.

The prequalification documents were submitted last Aug. 17. This exercise is meant to determine which groups are qualified to submit technical and financial proposals for the project. Those bids are expected to be opened by January 2016 and the DOTC expects to award the project by February 2016.

The DOTC said the operations and maintenance (O&M) of the regional airports, selected partly for their tourism potential, would be bid out in two bundles.

The first bundle consists of the P20.26-billion Bacolod-Silay and the P30.40-billion Iloilo airport projects. The second bundle will include the P40.57-billion Davao, the P14.62-billion Laguindingan and the P2.34-billion Bohol airport projects.

The winning concessionaires for each bundle will handle the O&M of the airports for 30 years and will undertake the expansion of the facilities as most of the airports are operating beyond their design capacity. These improvements are needed to enhance passenger safety and convenience as well as to ensure more efficient airport operations.

This is the second airport PPP deal after the P17.5-billion Mactan Cebu International Airport was rolled out and eventually awarded in 2014 to the Megawide-GMR consortium.

Apart from this project, the DOTC had said it was studying the possible O&M auction of Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the country’s busiest air gateway. This comes amid the broader goal to replace Naia, which suffers from heavy congestion, with a new international gateway.