Bidding for regional airports may push through by Q4

The government may push rush through with the bidding for the regional airports project in the fourth quarter, the PPP Center said.

PPP executive director Ferdinand Pecson told reporters on the sidelines of Euromoney’s The Philippines Energy and Infrastructure Finance Forum 2016 held yesterday, the government is set to conduct the bid submissions for the project in the last quarter of the year.

“The pre-qualification will not be repeated. Those who pre-qualified are the ones going to submit,” he said.

The regional airports project was considered by the previous administration to be ripe for bidding as pre-qualified firms were prepared to put forward their bids.

Groups pre-qualified by the previous administration to bid for the project are the Philippine Airports Consortium, Maya Consortium, GMR-Megawide Consortium, San Miguel Holdings Corp.-Incheon International Airport Corp. Consortium, and Filinvest-JATCO-Sojitz Consortium.

The project covers the upgrade of a total of five airports under two bundles.

Bundle 1 covers the Bacolod-Silay Airport and Iloilo Airport, while Bundle 2 consists of the New Bohol (Panglao) Airport; Davao Airport; and Laguindingan Airport.

Under the deal, the winning bidder for each bundle would be responsible for the operations and maintenance of the airports, as well as in expanding the facilities.

The PPP program launched in 2010 under the term of former President Benigno Aquino III, aims to get the private sector on board in infrastructure development.

Since the program’s launch, the government has awarded a total of 13 projects.