Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp. are ready to submit bids for the P108.2-billion contract to operate and maintain five regional airports under the government’s public private partnership program despite no bid submission date set by the Transport Department.
“I think most of the bidders are geared up by now and ready for that opportunity,” AEV first vice president for business development Roman Azanza III told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of a forum, referring to the five regional airports project.
Azanza said bidding out the project within the Aquino administration would be a much boost to the PPP program.
“It’s the best thing for this country to bid out this project because those airports need upgrading. All the bidders are working for over a year for this project. It’s been a very transparent project,” he added.
MPIC vice president for business development Karim Garcia agreed with Azanza that the government should push through with the bidding within the current administration.
“We are highly concerned if the bid submission date is not done by May 6. I have sent a formal letter to the PBAC [prequalification, bids, and awards committee], which states that we are ready to bid for this project and to give them time to secure clearances,” Garcia said. “We are saying that May 6 would be the date in which they can still have time to award the airports project to the winner in this administration.”
“After May 6, we have concerns that they won’t be able to do that and it leaves questions to what will be going to happen to the airport projects with the new administration,” he added.
Karim, though, said his company would continue to participate in the bidding of the project under the new administration.
“[But] we preferred to have the bid done within this administration rather than the potential delay,” Karim said.
GMR-Megawide Consortium earlier asked the Transportation Department to proceed with the bidding of five regional airports before President Benigno Aquino III steps down in July.
The department earlier deferred the bid submission date for the five regional airports from March 28 to a maximum of 30 days, or when all final clearances and approvals were obtained from the concerned agencies.
The Transportation Department earlier pre-qualified Maya Consortium led by Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Philippine Airports Consortium of Metro Pacific Investments Corp., San Miguel Holdings Corp.-IIAC Airport Consortium, GMR-Megawide Consortium and Filinvest-JATCO-Sojitz Consortium for the project.
Aboitiz Equity teamed up with Vinci Airports of France to form the Maya Consortium, while San Miguel Holdings tapped Incheon International Airport Corp. to create SMHC-IIAC Airport Corp.
MPIC teamed up with Aeroports de Paris Management SA, while Filinvest tapped Japan Airport Terminal Corp. and Sojitz Corp.
The five provincial airports in the PPP bundle are the P20.26-billion Bacolod-Silay International Airport and the P30.4-billion Iloilo International Airport under package 1, and the P14.62-billion Laguindingan Airport, P2.34-billion New Bohol (Panglao) Airport and P40.57-billion Davao International Airport under package 2.