Sangley airport attracts 3 possible bidders

MANILA, Philippines — The Sangley Point International Airport (SPIA) project in Cavite has attracted one more interested party, bringing the number of potential bidders to three.

Jesse Grepo, legal officer of the Cavite government’s public-private partnership selection committee, told The STAR that three companies have bought the bid documents for the airport project.

Due to requests and mobility restrictions in National Capital Region and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal or NCR Plus, the selection committee had decided to extend the deadline for the purchase of the project’s bid documents to May 14 from the original March 30 deadline.

Two companies had bought the bid documents for the airport project as of March 30.

Grepo declined to disclose the names of the three prospective bidders, saying there might be requests from other companies to extend the deadline again.

The provincial government of Cavite had made some fine-tuning on the project’s legal qualification requirement to address national security concerns.

The Cavite government now requires that its joint venture partner should be Philippine majority-owned and controlled, whether it be a single entity or a consortium.

If a consortium, the Philippine corporation should at least own and control 51 percent of the equity or voting interest.

The requirement was not applied to the airport project’s previous bidding, wherein the consortium of Lucio Tan’s MacroAsia Corp. and China Communications Construction Co. Ltd. (CCCC) won.

CCCC had a 60 percent stake in the consortium, while MacroAsia held the minority 40 percent.

The airport deal awarded to the MacroAsia-CCCC consortium was terminated last January due to the various deficiencies of the submission of requirements to conclude the joint venture agreement, prompting the provincial government of Cavite to start anew with its search for a partner.