Bidding to resume for reg’l airports

The Department of Transportation intends to resume the bidding for the regional airports project under the public- private partnership (PPP) scheme before the end of the year.

“We would like to have the date for the submission of the bid within the year. We will make that announcement and we would like the date for the submission to be within the year,” Roberto Lim, Transport Undersecretary for the air sector told reporters.

He said the government intends to proceed with the bidding of the regional airports PPP project by picking up from where the previous administration left off.

The regional airports project was rolled out by the previous administration but unable to go through bidding.

Lim said the project would still have two bundles with the first one composed of the Iloilo Airport and BacolodSilay Airport, while the second one covers the Davao Airport, New Bohol (Panglao) Airport and the Laguindingan Airport.

Under the project, the winning private firm for each bundle would handle the operations and maintenance of the airports as well undertake the expansion of the facilities.

While the current administration is looking to move away from bid premiums in PPP projects and holding the bidding based on the lowest user fees to be paid by the consumers, Lim said the government would be following the bid parameters set by the previous administration.

He said it would be difficult to change the bid parameters when prospective bidders have been preparing their offers for the project.

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.

Lim said the pre-qualified groups have asked for more time to review the project.

“They want to look at the airport again. They want to review their numbers,” he said.