North Luzon Airport Consortium seen to bag Clark airport deal

An alliance between Singapore’s Changi International Airport and local conglomerates JG Summit Holdings Inc. and Filinvest Development Corp. moved closer to winning the long-term operations and maintenance of Clark International Airport in Pampanga.

Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said yesterday that their proposal would be endorsed to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) next week.

The bidder, known as North Luzon Airport Consortium, emerged as the sole qualified group after the only other challenger, X-Droid Consortium, was disqualified.

Executives of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), the project implementation agency, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

A BCDA spokesperson yesterday pointed to a video clip on their Facebook page detailing the financial bid opening proceedings late last month.

Based on details announced in the video clip, North Luzon Airport offered a revenue sharing arrangement where the government would get an 18.25- percent share. The minimum amount was set at 10 percent.

The BCDA targets to award the project, which has a 25-year concession, before the end of this year, the spokesperson said.

In the interview on Thursday, Tugade described North Luzon Airport as the winner. However, under the Build-Operate-Transfer law, bidding exercises with only one bidder will trigger a negotiated process under Neda.

In a departure from previous public-private partnerships biddings, BCDA officials did not detail the reasons for the disqualification of X-Droid, a venture that includes affiliates of Philippines AirAsia and companies owned by Rep. Michael Romero and Zest-O founder Alfredo Yao.

Other interested parties included Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and Megawide Construction Corp., a part of the group that operates the Mactan Cebu International Airport in Cebu.

Megawide did not proceed after its partner, GMR Infrastructure, one of India’s most successful airport operators, failed to meet the requirements of the BCDA. Metro Pacific also did not bid after it questioned the lack of time to prepare. It also cited the BCDA’s inaction on certain “material risks.”

The BCDA released the concession agreement just before All Saint’s day holiday at the end of October this year and asked bidders to submit their offers the following week on Nov. 9.

A Clark victory by Changi, part of the group that operates Singapore’s main air hub, comes as it also vies to run Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia).

It joined Naia Consortium, a group of seven conglomerates that include JG Summit and Filinvest, that offered to upgrade and operate Naia to the tune of P102 billion.

The government, meanwhile, has moved to expand Clark Airport.

Last December, it awarded a contract to Megawide and India’s GMR Infrastructure for the construction of a new passenger terminal in Clark Airport.

The project will increase the airport’s current capacity of four million passengers yearly to 12 million passengers by 2020.