Business leaders split on privatizing airports after airspace outage fiasco
MANILA, Philippines — The business sector disagreed on whether airports in the Philippines should face privatization, as traffic in the country’s airspace disappeared for a few hours on January 1, disrupting a busy season for airlines and the tourism sector.
George Barcelon, president of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was not in favor of privatizing airports in the country.
“You cannot privatize all the airports. I wouldn’t go along that line. The private sector is not foolproof,” he said in a call with Philstar.com.
The PCCI head, whose flight from Dubai was among the thousands delayed, said he would feel safer if the government remained involved in the business of running airports, especially in matters of navigation.
“I heard foreigners commenting it was such a disappointment since the country was progressive. This is a wake-up call, for us to raise our standards,” Barcelon added.
That said, Joey Concepcion warmed up to the idea of a 2018 proposal to create a consortium to modernize the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Concepcion is the founder of Go Negosyo and a member of the Marcos Jr. administration’s private sector advisory council.
"[The Ninoy Aquino International Airport] is strategically located and any improvements made here will redound to so many benefits to the country," he said in a statement.
If the national government took the proposal seriously, the rehabilitation of NAIA’s near-decrepit state would have started in 2021 til 2024.
The proposal faced a natural death in March 2020, after the consortium withdrew the proposal owing to “unresolved issues” with the national government. The consortium counted some of the country’s biggest conglomerates among its ranks, such as Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc., AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp., Alliance Global Group Inc., Asia's Emerging Dragon Corp., Filinvest Development Corp., JG Summit Holdings Inc. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp.
A few days prior to the outage that shut down the system controlling the country's airspace, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista announced that the Marcos administration is preparing to entertain proposals from corporations in an effort to privatize the country's major gateway, NAIA.
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