Provincial airport PPP auction delayed anew

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) has delayed the auction of public-private partnership (PPP) contracts for five regional airports.

The PPP Center said yesterday the submission of qualification requirements for the projects, carried over from the Aquino administration, would be held on June 15. It was previously set on May 11.

The qualification process will determine which groups will be allowed to submit bids.

The PPP projects, relaunched under the Duterte administration with significant changes, involved bidding out the development as well as operations and maintenance of five regional gateways: Bacolod-Silay, Davao, Iloilo, Laguindingan and New Bohol (Panglao). The development of the airports was collectively valued at about P108 billion.

Private sector players earlier warned of delays due to changes made by the government on the bid terms, specifically on the unbundling of the airport contracts.

Instead of the five airports being bundled into two groups, the current administration decided to bid out each airport under a separate contract. That meant bidders would make a separate offer for each airport.

“These PPP projects will improve the regional airports services by allowing private sector partners to operate, maintain and improve the airports airside and landside facilities. This is in line with the government’s goal to develop international gateways in the different regions in the country,” the PPP Center said in a statement.

Five groups were prequalified during the original process. These were Metro Pacific Investments Corp., San Miguel Corp. with South Korea’s Incheon Airport; Aboitiz Equity Ventures with VINCI Airports; Megawide Construction Corp. and India’s GMR Infrastructure, and the Filinvest Group with Japan’s Sojitz and Jatco.

Those groups would be automatically qualified for this round “provided that there are no changes in their legal, technical and financial capacity”, the DOTr said in a previous memorandum.