Oh well. It looks like our NAIA 3 is obsolete and tiny, even before it is opened. According to Fortune magazine, the Thais spent some $4 billion on the new Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport. In the case of NAIA 3, they are claiming expenditures of $600 million but about a third of that was in questionable disbursement by a Piatco PR consultant who, like Garci and JocJoc, has since vanished into thin air.
They have some loose ends to tie up, but it seems the airport will open on schedule June next year. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a strong leader unlike Ate Glue, has so far delivered on his promises. He promised to deliver the new airport in June and there is no reason to doubt him. In our case, Ate Glue has announced several deadlines to open NAIA 3 and missed them all.
We are now hearing a lot of noises from different quarters about how NAIA 3 would open soon, but even the previously optimistic DOTC Secretary had to admit that they won’t make the promised opening schedule of December this year. They can’t convince Takenaka, the Japanese contractor to work with them in violation of Takenaka’s contract with Piatco. In the meantime, despite the tough talk, the legal problems remain unresolved and worse, the unused terminal building stands as a monument to failure of a direct foreign investment. NAIA 3 should give any arriving investor enough second thoughts about doing business here, and take the next flight out.
If Ate Glue wants a good way of showing the world what she is made of, and a quick way of regaining public confidence, the NAIA 3 is a good place to start. If she is the President she says she is, she should be able to get the parties involved together and hammer out a solution. Since the decision of the Supreme Court is also crucial in this case, she should be able to impress upon the Justices the absolute economic importance of a quick resolution of cases or petitions pending before the high court that are related to the NAIA 3 problem.
We don’t have to wait for the resolution of the arbitration cases filed abroad if a local solution can be worked out. Of course, not everyone would be happy giving up anything in a compromise, but to break the impasse, it is the job of a leader to make all parties accept a compromise anyway. The way it stands, the unused finished structure tells the world that investing here is like playing Russian roulette… you never know how things would go, specially when there is a change in the tenant at Malacanang. The failure to compensate after the government takeover is also seen as scandalous in foreign business circles.
To be fair, the NAIA 3 problem really started with FVR, was made worse by the people of Erap and further aggravated by the people of Ate Glue. A succession of DOTC Secretaries, including a dead one, brought about the Asia embarrassing failure we now see every time we take a flight out of NAIA. FVR’s boys shouldn’t have awarded it to Piatco, in the first place, on the basis of a non-responsive challenge to the proposal of the Asia Emerging Dragons. Just to show something was fishy, DOTC under FVR refused to share details of Piatco’s winning terms with the Dragons. And when the Dragons sued, they got word from the Palace to withdraw the case and to quietly fade away.
Then too, the Germans made a mistake in agreeing to bankroll the undercapitalized Cheng company without first finding out if their local partners can really pull the project off. When I met with them in Frankfurt early this year, I told them they should have looked for track record, which the partners in Emerging Dragons have. The Chengs couldn’t even be considered in the same category as any one of the Chinoy taipans in the Dragons company.
And neither is Emilio Yap of Manila Hotel, despite his pretensions, on the same "taipanic" category. I have asked a number of people but no one can tell me what exactly Mr. Yap bought, given that the Supreme Court declared the Piatco contract null and void. And where could he have generated that kind of money to buy what he said he did? Is Mr. Yap merely leveraging his supposed (imagined?) closeness to authorities who would be needed to sort out the legal mess of the project?
Ate Glue must sit down and settle this mess once and for all. This is one big test of her ability to govern. Let us not even talk now of her signing a peace accord with the communist rebels and the Muslim separatists… or controlling corruption in government… or quickly ending the fiscal deficit. Let us just think of a bite-sized problem of opening one airport terminal, one that’s not even up to regional standards. If she cannot do that now, why should we believe she has what it takes to resolve weightier problems facing the country? Resign na lang!
Actually, if the parties to the problem refuse to see the light and refuse to bend over backwards to resolve this national embarrassment, the President should do something drastic. If I were Ate Glue, I would threaten to declare Clark the new gateway airport to the NCR, something that must eventually be done, anyway. I would call for a bidding to build a new state of the art airport in Clark like the ones on Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong. If that doesn’t scare the NAIA parties into cooperation, I don’t know what will.
We need NAIA 3 to get going. We have allowed the lawyers and the Chengs to waste more than enough time. Enough is enough, is what a strong leader would say at this point. So, what is she waiting for?
The organizers point out "English proficiency is currently perceived as one of the Philippines’ key competitive advantages on the global job market." The country is in fact well-positioned to receive even more business process outsourcing (BPO) investments, from contact centers to medical transcription and to a number of other services. Rebuilding and protecting this competitive advantage, project organizers say, will also help the country better benefit from the opportunities of globalization.
But, they warn, this competitive advantage "is being eroded by the decreasing level of English proficiency among the younger generation; an observation evidenced in pop culture and call center industry statistics whereby out of 100 applicants less than five percent meet proficiency standards." They also noted "a growing awareness within Philippine business circles and the Philippine society at large that ‘something must be done’ to convince the youth that ‘English is their Ticket to the Future’."
The European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP), EON, Inc. – The Corporate Communications Network and the Promoting English Proficiency (PEP) project led by the American Chamber of Commerce and the Makati Business Club have taken up the challenge to spearhead an English advocacy campaign. I guess this is one effort that would benefit the local business sector as well. Hopefully, the bureaucrats welcome the gesture and cooperate with the program organizers.
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Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com