MANILA, Philippines — The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) was instructed by lawmakers to overhaul its lease rates to plug revenue leakages from rentals around the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
At the budget hearing of the Department of Transportation (DOTr), Camiguin Rep. Jurdin Jesus Romualdo grilled MIAA officials for allowing lessees to sublease NAIA properties at higher rates.
In one case, Romualdo said that a lessee is generating up to P5 million monthly from subleasing when it is renting the property from MIAA for just P150,000 a month.
In response, MIAA officer in charge Bryan Co admitted that the administrative order (AO) prices for airport leasing were last adjusted in 2000. As such, Co vowed that MIAA would increase lease rates in the subsequent closing of rent contracts.
“We do have several hangars within our general aviation area at the NAIA, and some of them are subleasing. There is a need (for the lessees and sublessees) to declare them with us,” Co said.
“In terms of the initiative to actually have better rates for MIAA because we discovered when we came in that they are quite low, we are in the process of increasing these AO rates that were last updated in 2000,” he said.
Co cited, as an example, the recent signing of lease contracts amounting to P600 per sqm, above the previous rate of just P150 per sqm.
Further, Co vowed that his agency would keep on updating the valuation prices of NAIA properties to ensure that they match market movements.
On the other hand, Romualdo asked MIAA to submit to Congress the contracts of all its existing lessees, particularly its agreement with Park ‘N Fly. He said Congress has to find out how much the government is losing from this practice of subleasing in NAIA.
Romualdo also said that plugging the revenue leakage can bolster the funds for the maintenance and upgrade of NAIA. This way, the DOTr can reallocate some of its budget for other priorities, such as in railways.
For 2024, the DOTr is hoping Congress will approve its proposed appropriation of P6.09 billion for its aviation infrastructure program.
From this, the DOTr is using P1.64 billion for maintenance works at NAIA, although the airport is set to be turned over to a private concessionaire by the first quarter of 2024.