NAIA Consortium to comply with approval process

The group of seven conglomerates, which offered to upgrade the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) for P350 billion, is committed to follow the approval process for its unsolicited proposal to upgrade and expand the country’s main international gateway.

“The seven Filipino conglomerates comprising the NAIA Consortium stand on uncompromising legal compliance for the approval of its proposal,” NAIA Consortium spokesperson Jose Emmanuel Reverente said in a statement.

The statement of the group composed of Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc., AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp., Alliance Global Group Inc., Asia’s Emerging Dragon Corp., Filinvest Development Corp., JG Summit Holdings Inc. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp., comes after the group of Megawide Construction Corp. and GMR Infrastructure Ltd. of India last week said it was alarmed with the NAIA Consortium’s intention to tweak the proposal submitted to the Department of Transportation (DOTr) last Feb.12.

GMR-Megawide believes tweaking proposals after they have been submitted and deemed complete would put into question the integrity of the process for evaluation of all unsolicited proposals.

“If it is the intent of the NAIA Consortium to tweak their proposal, it should be properly revised and re-submitted to the government. It also follows that this resubmitted proposal should be evaluated after the GMR-Megawide proposal,” said GMR-Megawide which submitted a $3 billion proposal for the NAIA’s upgrade last March 1.

Under the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) law, NAIA Consortium’s offer which was

given first, would be evaluated and reviewed by the government ahead of that of GMR-Megawide’s.

Reverente said the members of the NAIA Consortium have set aside their individual competitive spirit and would want others to do the same or at least let the proper process take its course before raising questions that are based on speculation.

He also said the BuildOperate-Transfer Law calls for negotiations between the proponent and the government to find the best iteration of a new NAIA and that is where changes, or “tweaking” would happen.

“For us, our proposal provides the short, medium, and long-term solutions to NAIA’s problems. However, we are flexible and can adjust to what the government wants. Otherwise, we can proceed to deliver on our promise as soon as we are cleared for take-off,” he said.