The Transportation Department is set to award the P735-billion New Manila International Airport project in Bulacan province to San Miguel Corp. as no party submitted a counter-offer during the Swiss Challenge.
“No one submitted, no one joined the bidding. No one submitted a comparative proposal to challenge original proponent which is San Miguel,” Transportation Assistant Secretary for procurement and project implementation and bids and awards committee chairman Giovanni Lopez said.
The technical working group recommended to the department to immediately issue the notice of award to San Miguel Holdings Corp., in the absence of rival bids during the Swiss Challenge. The department is expected to issue the notice to proceed by the first week of September.
“They [SMHC] have 20 days to comply with our conditions. We can issue the notice of award within five days based on the recommendation of the TWG,” Lopez said.
He said the department was expecting the company to hold the groundbreaking ceremony for the Bulacan airport in Bulakan town by the fourth quarter this year.
“We thank President Duterte for bringing this historic project closer to reality. We share in government’s vision to make this country better, and the lives of the Filipino people better,” San Miguel president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said.
“From the time we first proposed to build a new international gateway, our goal was simple: help address the perennial problem of airport congestion, which has weighed down many aspects of our lives,” he said.
Ang said with the new airport project, “we will generate a lot of jobs and boost not just the local economies of Bulacan but also of neighboring provinces.”
“As part of a larger infrastructure ecosystem that consists of existing and future expressways and mass rail systems, it will be easily accessible from north and south Luzon and will help in significantly decongesting Metro Manila,” he said.
The project involves the construction, operation, and maintenance of an international airport located in Bulakan, Bulacan. It will include the construction of an 8.4-kilometer tollway that will connect NMIA to North Luzon Expressway in Marilao, Bulacan.
The NMIA will have a design capacity of 100 million passengers annually and airside facilities with a configuration of four parallel runways. It forms part of the “basket of solutions” of the DOTr to help decongest Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
The NMIA is expected to be operational within four to six years from the start of construction.