Megawide hopes Swiss Challenge for NAIA rehab winds up by Q1 2021
MANILA, Philippines — An official of the Megawide Construction Corp., which clinched the right to modernize and operate the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), on Monday said they hope the Swiss Challenge for the project will be done by the first quarter of 2021.
Manuel Louie Ferrer, Megawide’s managing director for transport, said the construction firm is set to submit its last remaining requirement to the government this week.
“Hopefully this gets elevated to the Cabinet Committee and after which is the Swiss Challenge so hopefully, we can wrap up the whole thing by, hopefully, first quarter of next year,” he said in an online press conference.
Megawide, with its partner GMR Infrastructure Ltd., was granted the original proponent status for the NAIA rehabilitation in July.
This is after the government has terminated discussions with a super-consortium backed by seven of the country’s biggest conglomerates for the rehabilitation of Metro Manila’s main international gateway.
Back in 2018, Megawide-GMR submitted a $3-billion unsolicited proposal to upgrade and rehabilitate the highly congested Naia under an 18-year concession. The proposal then was to increase airfield capacity to 950-1,000 aircraft movements a day, a 30 to 35 percent increase from the estimated daily movements at that time.
Its updated proposal is pegged at P109 billion under a 25-year concession period.
The construction would be done in three phases: the improvement of airside congestion and terminals and the connection via bus rapid transit; the construction of a new terminal and additional taxi lanes; and the construction of an elevated railway.
Under the Swiss Challenge, other prospective bidders of the project can make competing offers with Megawide having the right to match such offers.
Megawide’s consortium, which also includes GMR of India, is the group behind the redevelopment of the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA), having won the public bidding in 2013.
