spot_img
27.7 C
Philippines
Friday, March 29, 2024

Megawide-GMR eyes partners for Cebu lot

- Advertisement -

Megawide-GMR Consortium said Wednesday it is in talks with the SM Group and other local and foreign companies to develop a six-hectare property adjacent to the Mactan Cebu International Airport into a mixed-use real estate development. 

GMR Megawide Cebu Airport Corp. president Louie Ferrer told reporters his company was negotiating with eight local and foreign firms, including SM Prime Holdings Inc., to develop a six-hectare property beside the airport into commercial development with hotels, malls and parking areas. 

“We will lease out the property. [But] we are still finalizing the bidding terms. We will start the bidding in two months from now,” Ferrer said. 

Megawide is partly owned by the Philippines’ richest man, Henry Sy, the owner of SM Group. 

Ferrer said GMCAC expected the mixed-use real estate project to be completed by 2018, in time for the first phase of the modernization of the Mactan Cebu International Airport. 

- Advertisement -

Ferrer said GMCAC was targeting to complete the first phase of the airport in October 2018, bringing the total annual passenger capacity to 13 million from the terminal’s original capacity of 4.5 million passengers per annum. 

GMCAC the number of airport passengers reached 8 million in 2015, up from 7.2 million in 2014. 

“For this year, we expect to grow by double-digits,” Ferrer said. 

Passenger traffic is expected to reach 28 million by the end of the concession period.

GMCAC spent $15 million or about P700 million in Terminal 1 renovations so far.  

GMR-Megawide Consortium won a 25-year concession agreement in December 2013 that involved the renovation of the Terminal 1 of Mactan Cebu airport as well as the design, financing, construction and operation of a second terminal. It submitted the highest bid of P14.4 billion. 

The P14.4-billion premium paid by GMR-Megawide was on top of the P17.5 billion to be  spent on a new passenger terminal. 

Project funding for MCIA was completed in 2014 through a consortium of the country’s leading banks led by BDO Capital and Investment Corp. and the Asian Development Bank.

The GMR Group said it also won an arbitration case against the government of Maldives over the cancellation of the Male airport contract in 2012. 

The GMR Group signed a 25-year concession agreement with Maldives and the Maldives Airport Company Limited for the modernization and operation of Male’s Ibrahim Nasir International Airport in 2010, a project worth $500 million. 

After a change of government, Maldives terminated the contract two years later.

- Advertisement -

LATEST NEWS

Popular Articles