Megawide One Step Closer to Taking On NAIA Rehabilitation Project
A consortium led by listed Megawide Construction Corporation has received original proponent status (OPS) for its $3 billion proposal to rehabilitate the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) granted OPS last July 15 to Megawide with its operating partner, GMR of India.
The announcement comes two weeks after a “superconsortium” of some of the country’s biggest conglomerates formally withdrew from the NAIA redevelopment project after its proposed changes were not approved by the government.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Megawide touted its experience transforming some of the other airports in the country, including the Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA), the country's second largest airport.
Besides receiving numerous awards for MCIA’s design, Megawide said passenger volume steadily at the airport increased from 4.5 million annually in November 2014 when it took o te project to 12.7 million in 2019.
“Our team has transformed MCIA as primarily the country’s top tourism gateway. We aim to contribute our experience in airport development and value engineering to the longawaited resurgence of NAIA,” said Louie Ferrer, Megawide managing director for transportation.
“The decongestion and rehabilitation of NAIA is vital to sustainably supporting the air traffic needs of our National Capital Region,” Ferrer added. “Megawide has always been supportive of our Government’s vision to improve and modernize the airport infrastructure in the Philippines and we are committed to bringing our experience in airport operations and management, and engineering excellence to the country’s main gateway.”
The Megawide-led consortium said it is now awaiting the next steps from the government.
The consortium submitted its proposal for the rehabilitation of NAIA in March 2018. The unsolicited proposal was for an 18-year concession to increase airfield capacity to 950 to 1,000 aircraft movements per day, a 30 percent increase from estimated daily movements at the airport that year.
The government initially granted OPS to the superconsortium composed of the Ayala family’s AC Infrastructure Holdings Corporation, Andrew Tan’s Alliance Global Group Inc., the Aboitiz family’s Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc., the Gotianun family’s Filinvest Development Corporation, the Gokongwei family’s JG Summit Holdings, Inc., Lucio Tan’s Asia’s Emerging Dragon Corp., and Manny Pangilinan’s Metro Pacific Investment Corp.
But the MVP group MPIC announced that it was withdrawing from the consortium last March.
