RAPPLER - – Officials of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport are thankful
rules for bidding the contract to expand the country’s second busiest
airport were finally approved, paving the way for the long-delayed
project.
The P17.5-billion project, which involves the construction of a new
world-class passenger terminal, among others, “should have been done 10
years ago,” said Nigel Paul Villarete, General Manager of the airport
authority.
“The existing terminal was built in 1995 and it had a capacity of
around 4.5 million passengers per year, which was breached in 2010 when
we exceeded 5 million passengers,” said Villarete. “Looking at the
timeline, it takes about 5 to 7 years [to build a new terminal].”
Still, better late than never, he said, noting it will greatly help in easing congestion at the airport.
The
Aquino administration gave the go signal for the project to proceed in September 2012.
Pre-qualification for the airport project was supposed to have been
held January 28, 2013 but it was moved to February 13 after the
Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC)
agreed to review its original bidding rules, which barred companies with interests in airlines from joining.
Final rules released on Friday, February 1, allowed airlines to participate in the bidding but set “safeguards” to avoid
conflict of interest.
Submission and opening of qualification documents will be held on February 27 instead of the initial February 18 schedule.
The first phase of the project will involve the construction of a new
passenger terminal building with capacity of 8 million passengers a
year as well as the operation and maintenance of the old and new
facilities. Phase two, which will be done in 2023, will involve the
expansion of the new and existing terminals.
Airport congestion
The expansion will allow the airport to accommodate more passengers.
The existing terminal building has a capacity of handling 4.5 million
passengers annually on two wings—the domestic and international.
“The terminal right now sees up to 6.8 to 6.9 million passengers. So
you can imagine how congested the terminal is. That’s the reason why
we’re building a new terminal,” said Villarete.
Passenger traffic is growing at a rate of 14% for domestic and 11% for international.
“Projection for the next 10 to 20 years assuming that we have to be
conservative in doing so, is roughly 7% for both domestic and
international. For every 3 domestic travellers, we have one
international traveller,” said Villarete.
According to the DOTC, this growing number of passengers has resulted
in inconvenience and substandard service in the terminal, which also
lacks the ability to handle more passengers in peak hours.
“Growth in aviation sector in the Philippines has largely moved in
tandem with economic growth. In terms of distribution of passenger
traffic, 4 major international airports handle more than 70% of total
passenger traffic of the Philippines. Mactan-Cebu International Airport
is the second most important airport for the Philippines in terms of
passenger traffic,” the DOTC said.
Bidders
Several companies including diversified conglomerate
JG Summit Holdings Inc.,
San Miguel Corp., the tandem of
Ayala Corp. and Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc., as well as
Metro Pacific Investments Corp. expressed interest in the airport project.
“I’m happy with the kind of bidders we had. Looking back on the last
two to 3 years you can really see that’s there’s a lot of liquidity in
the economy right now and a lot of interest. I would attribute this
because of the anti-corruption drive of the government,” said Villarete.
The
bidding process suffered a delay after the DOTC decided to review the rules,
which earlier disqualified JG Summit and San Miguel from bidding, as
these companies own airlines Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines,
respectively.
The
main reason for the exclusion was conflict of interest.
“An airline or airport operator can make availability of slots, gates,
counters, lounges, baggage handling more difficult to their
competitors,” explained DOTC Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya.
However, Abaya overturned his decision after his
peers in the Cabinet reminded him of the efforts to attract foreign capital in public-private partnerships.
The
final bidding rules allowed airlines and airline-related entities to bid
for the Mactan-Cebu airport expansion, but they cannot be directly
involved in the entity that will eventually operate the airport.
Increasing tourist figures
This airport expansion is expected to boost Cebu’s tourism industry.
“Marketing efforts were not prioritized before. Clark has been
marketing itself in the last few years. We only recently started
marketing ourselves through the road shows because of that we saw the
importance of marketing and targeting china India etc. in the next few
years,” said Villarete.
The industry has been growing steadily over the last few years.
“One of the unique advantages of Cebu City, which has also
contributed to rapid growth in air passenger traffic over the last few
years, is the fact that it is a hub for industrial and tourism sectors
and attracts both business as well as leisure travellers from across the
world,” said the DOTC in a report.
Around 1.6 million tourists visit Cebu per year. Almost 50% of the
tourists in Philippines from East Asia travel to Cebu for business or
leisure purposes. Overseas Filipinos also travel extensively to this
region. These travellers form the mainstay of passenger traffic for
Mactan-Cebu International Airport, said the Department of Tourism (DOT).
The DOT is in the process of creating a new National Tourism
Development Plan (NTDP), which will lay down the country’s tourism
development plans and direction until 2016. In the NTDP, there are plans
for improvement of tourism infrastructure, strengthening and
development of new tourism destinations, divergence of tourism products
and enhancement of tourism human resources.
The Cebu City Tourism Commission has also continued to focus on
initiatives such as hosting annual festivals to enhance the tourist
inflow in the region. Among the festivals planned are the Barangayan
Festival, Chinese Moon Festival in September, Christmas Tree Festival
during Christmas season, Food Festival, Flower Festival and Water Sports
Festival in summer.
“If you go by the statistics of passenger arrivals the bulk still is
coming from domestic passengers so safe to say to domestic tourist
arrivals are very strong. We are also getting data telling us that
there’s growth in terms of foreign arrivals. This is led by the Korean,
followed by the Japanese, and then we’re seeing growth from non-
traditional markets like Russia and Europe. And these are the markets we
are trying to attract, the long stay big spender tourists,” said
Francis Monera, VP, Visayas of the Philippines Chamber of Commerce and
Industry.
For latest information on the
Philippine Real Estate Industry and the Real Estate Service Act (RA9646),
please visit www.ra9646.com.ph.
