Construction of new Clark airport starts

CLARK FREEPORT — The construction of a new worldclass passenger terminal at the Clark International Airport has started yesterday.

Officials of national government agencies and local government units including House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, Former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria MacapagalArroyo, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, Secretary of Transportation Arthur Tugade and BCDA President Vince Dizon, Pampanga Governor Lilia Pineda and Tarlac Governor Susan Yap led the ground breaking ceremonies. LausGroup Chairman and CEO Levy P. Laus (C) joins Kapampangan for a snapshot after the annual Christmas gathering at Dencio fs Restaurant, LausGroup Complex on Wednesday.—

Chris Navarro

The Clark International Airport (CRK) new terminal building is the first of the Duterte administration’s hybrid infrastructure projects under the Build Build Build program.

Under the hybrid model, the government will build the infrastructure using its own funds and then the Operations and Maintenance will be bid out to the private sector.

The new terminal is expected to accommodate an additional eight million passengers per annum.

This hybrid project is considered the fastest public-private partnership/build-operate-transfer (BOT) law procurement process to be implemented by the national government since its approval by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) board in June 2017.

The project broke ground in only six months after it was approved by the NEDA board.

Megawide-GMR won the bid to build the terminal, after going through a very stringent and transparent bidding process which was monitored by the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank— besting four other bidders for the design, engineering and construction of the new CRK terminal building.