Lucio Tan’s MacroAsia, China’s CCCC bag P208.5B Sangley airport project

The group of Lucio Tan’s MacroAsia Corp. and its partner China Communications Construction Co. Ltd. (CCCC) on Friday has formally won the auction for the provincial government of Cavite’s initiative to develop the Sangley Airport into an international gateway.

In a regulatory filing, MacroAsia said that on February 14 it received through e-mail the “Notice of Selection and Award for the Sangley Point International Airport Project, from the Provincial Government of Cavite.”

The notice stated that the Cavite provincial government acted favorably upon the recommendation of its Public-Private Partnership Selection Committee date February 11.

“[T]he consortium of China Communications Construction Co. Ltd. (CCCC) and MacroAsia Corp. (MAC) is hereby selected as the Joint Venture Partner of the Province of Cavite and is awarded the development and implementation of Phase 1 of the Sangley Point International Airport (SPIA) Project, with an estimated Phase 1 total project cost of approximately P208.5 Billion,” the award notice said.

From the signing of the Joint Venture Development Agreement (JVDA), MacroAsia ssid it will take 12 to 18 months for the consortium to complete the detailed engineering design leading to financial closing.

To recall, the consortium of MacroAsia and CCCC were the sole bidder for the Sangley Airport project when bids were opened in December last year. 

The Sangley International Airport project is a joint venture between the private sector and the local government unit of Cavite. In such a set-up, the project does not need to secure the approval of other government agencies such as the National Economic and Development Authority.

The private partner will build the airport and the facilities, while the provincial government will reclaim and lease the land to the winning bidder.

The Cavite government originally intended to do the project on its own. But Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla said earlier the “government bidding process is too cumbersome so we would rather that they lease the land from us and they put up an airport company before. Everything would be private.”

The operations and maintenance will go through a separate bidding after the airport and its facilities have been completed.

The expanded Sangley Airport will have four runways and will be able to accommodate up to 100 million passengers a year.

The Department of Transportation (DOTr) took over Sangley Airport’s construction after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered to have the project completed by November 2019.

The government tapped Unimaster Conglomeration Inc. as contractor for P486.028 million.

Remulla earlier said the Cavite government will reimburse DOTr’s expenses once the Sangley Airport expansion is ready to be implemented.

There has been renewed interest in building airports outside of Metro Manila, as NAIA—the country’s premier gateway—has reached overcapacity.

Currently serving at least 42 million passengers, the four NAIA terminals were designed to accommodate 31 million passengers a year. —LDF, GMA News