Megawide awarded NAIA rehab

Gets OPS as well

Now that the super consortium is out of the picture, construction and engineering firm Megawide Construction Corp. is back in the game reviving plans to catch the rehabilitation of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) project for itself.

Megawide on Friday told the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) has granted the consortium original proponent status (OPS) for the development of NAIA.

The consortium, which includes GMR of India and which is also its partner in the modernization of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) earlier, was informed of the OPS status in a letter dated 15 July this year.

Since the handover of operations in November 2014, passenger volume in the award-winning MCIA steadily increased from 4.5 million a year to 12.7 million in 2019.

Louie Ferrer, Megawide Managing Director for Transportation, said the decongestion and rehabilitation of NAIA is crucial to boosting the air traffic requirements of the country.

“Megawide has always been supportive of our government’s vision to improve and modernize the airport infrastructure in the Philippine, and we are committed to bringing our experience in airport operations and management, and engineering excellence to the country’s main gateway,” Ferrer said.

“We aim to contribute our experience in airport development and value engineering to the longawaited resurgence of NAIA... We believe in the potential of NAIA and we see its vital role in our economy’s recovery and continuing development,” he added.

Ferrer said the Megawide-led consortium looks to hear from the government soon.

Megawide and GMR submitted in March 2018 a $3-billion unsolicited proposal to upgrade and rehabilitate the highly-congested NAIA under a proposed 18-year concession.

The proposal then was to increase airport’s capacity up to 1,000 aircraft movements per day or a 30 to 35 percent increase from estimated daily movements at the time.

However, the prospective NAIA concession will now be based on the terms of reference presented by government that recently terminated discussions with the first consortium that bagged the OPS.

In 2018, the government extended the OPS to the “super-consortium” formed by seven of the country’s biggest conglomerates: Aboitiz InfraCapital, Inc; AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp; Alliance Global Group, Inc.; Asia’s Emerging Dragon Corp; Filinvest Development Corp; and JG Summit Holdings, Inc. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp.

Given the adverse impact of the coronavirus pandemic on air travel, the previous NAIA consortium said the original terms and conditions of the airport rehabilitation project has proven unviable and asked government for some form of guarantee to help it obtain bank financing for the project, but the government refuse.

That offer to rehabilitate the NAIA was formally withdrawn last week.