20 July 2023
Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has approved the ₱170.6 billion solicited public-private partnership (PPP) proposal to rehabilitate the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief Arsenio Balisacan said on Wednesday.
At a Palace briefing, Balisacan said the winning private concessionaire is required to invest in modern airport control equipment, construct Terminal 2 and 3 extensions within the next 2 years, establish new ramps, rehabilitate runways and taxiways, and connect Terminal 1-4 facilities for an in-extendible period of 15 years contract.
NEDA said the project is expected "to address longstanding issues at NAIA such as the inadequate capacity of passenger terminal buildings and restricted aircraft movement."
The rehabilitation project aims to increase the current airport capacity from 35 million passengers to at least 62 million passengers per year and increase air traffic movement from 40 to 48 per hour.
Currently, it handles 30,961,467 passengers as of June 2023. NAIA handled 47,898,046 passengers in 2019 prior to the covid19 pandemic that plagued the country which drastically reduced traffic throughput at the airport to 8,015,385 in 2021.
The DOTr earlier floated the possibility of lengthening the concession period by including a provision that would extend it by another 10 years should the two new airports — New Manila International Airport in Bulacan and Sangley International Airport in Cavite — are delayed, but the stipulation was removed by NEDA.
The government planning agency also disapproved the solicited ₱267 billion proposal of Manila International Airport Consortium (MIAC) which is pushing for a 25-year concession period for the rehabilitation, improvement, operation and maintenance of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, saying the proposed plan of 70 million passengers per annum in 2048 is unrealistic. The MIAC plan is also inconsistent with JICA's Mega Manila Multiple Airport system transport strategy, adopted by the government of the Philippines.
You can find the Jica transport strategies for Mega Manila here and here
₱170.6 billion may be too low for MIAC, and I'm predicting this consortium will also collapse like its first iteration the NAIA super consortium back in 2019. The ₱267 billion proposal is already lower than the NAIA super consortium's and they had forgone the third runway using reclaimed land in Las Pinas-Paranaque wetland park in manila bay. With that being said, what I'm seeing here is that the government is not too keen on using NAIA in the long term, they might be planning on closing it down once the other airports are finished. Also, with all these airport projects, I noticed that there is little to no thought on how these 3-4 airports will be connected. We also have Clark Airport, and that one will be connected via an airport express using NSCR to Makati CBD. How about NAIA, Bulacan and Sangley Airports? Bulacan Airport is to be connected with MRT-7 in its succeeding phases but it will only serve northern metro manila and not the cities south of the pasig river, most specially the Makati and BGC CBDs. Imagine you're coming from an international flight and you landed at Bulacan airport, and you have a connecting domestic flight at Clark, NAIA or Sangley, or let's say a connecting international flight from Bulacan to Sangley or vice versa, how are you going to transfer seamlessly? It's a complete mess. NAIA is already a stressful airport for transit, transferring from one terminal to another, what more if we're going to operate 3-4 airports at once? Also worth mentioning the JICA in 2014 did not recommend an airport in Bulacan, what it recommended in the long term is Sangley.
ReplyDeleteBulacan Airport is nuts. Dapat yan sa south ng Manila ginawa.
ReplyDeleteBad move pag sinara ang NAIA. NAIa could evolve into an airport to cater premium pax just like Haneda. The bulacan airport will somewhat be like Narita. Which is yun na sana role nga Clark. Kaya panget na ginawa yung Bulacan sa bulacan. Geographically wise. Kung sa south sana yun maganda. May mga Industrial zones dun at Batangas port is expanding and growing. Malakas sana yun for air frieght demands dami ding population from south. Ewan ko ba na approve yang bulacan. Ang layo naman sa Metro.