The new national pastime is complaining about the Manila International Airport: the power outages, the traffic congestion, the flight delays and the quality of airline services. This facility has become a national embarrassment, regularly named the world’s worst airport.
When Terminal 3 was added to this crowded complex, there was supposed to be a rail linking it with the two other terminals. It does not exist to date. To move from one terminal to another, the harried passenger will have to brave the congested roads between them.
Seeing how our decrepit airport hampers the country’s economic growth, a consortium of large Filipino conglomerates offered to rehabilitate the facility, effectively privatizing its management and operations. Called the Manila International Airport Consortium (MIAC), it is composed of: Aboitiz InfraCapital, AC Infrastructure Holdings Corporation, Asia’s Emerging Dragon Corporation, Alliance Global Infracorp Development, Filinvest Development Corporation, JG Summit Infrastructure Holdings Corporation and Global Infrastructure Partners.
A few months ago, the MIAC bid P100 billion to rehab the facility. A few days ago, the offer was more than doubled to P210 billion. The rehab was described as urgent.
The Manila airport, when it was last upgraded, is designed to handle 30 million passengers annually. At its pre-pandemic peak, the facility handled 48 million. The rehabilitation proposed by the consortium will enable the airport to handle 55 million passengers a year. This is not much, considering the sharp spike in air traffic. Because the airport has limited runway space, planes often have to circle around the air dome before receiving permission to land.
When the NLEX and the SLEX were last upgraded a few years ago, at great cost to the two private concessionaires now operating them, they were supposed to accommodate that rising load. A study released shortly after the upgrade said the two expressways will be congested in five years. This is what we see now.
Government is offering the MIAC only 15 years to rehabilitate the facility and recover their investments. This seems too tight. It will require the consortium to charge painfully higher fees to get a return on investment.
There is a final limit on the extent the Manila airport could be feasibly upgraded: it only has one-and-a-half runways sitting on very expensive land. The runways are shared with the Philippine Air Force and small corporate aircraft.
The window for a feasible rehabilitation of the Manila airport is rapidly closing, even as our bureaucrats dither on the consortium proposal. Not too far north, San Miguel Corporation is building a world-class airport linked by rail and tollway to the city. It will open with four runways that could eventually be expanded to eight. It will be supported by an air industry hub servicing the region.
San Miguel’s airport is entirely privately funded and could be operational before any substantial rehab of the old Manila airport is done, undercutting the commercial viability of the latter.
Delay
This is bad news for those waiting in the long queue to get their license plates. The Ortigas branch of LandBank froze the account of the company manufacturing the plates. This caused financial disruption in the company’s operations.
The manufacturer, OMI-JKG Philippines, Inc. now struggles paying its local and foreign suppliers. The legal representative of the company expressed disappointment over the decision of the LandBank Ortigas manager to withhold release of company funds needed to settle obligations to suppliers.
LandBank Ortigas’ freeze was triggered by a letter requesting the bank to do so. The letter was sent by Christian Calalang, who used the own PPI-JKG Philippines Inc. before this company was sold to Annabelle Arcilla-Margaroli and renamed OMI-JKG Philippines Inc.
It turns out Calalang owns only one share in the new company, valued at P100. Arcilla-Margaroli informed the company’s banks of the present ownership. LandBank Ortigas says it is uncertain over which party should be recognized as having valid authority over the contested company account.
The company has accounts in several banks, namely: AUB, Security Bank, Union Bank, PNB and BPI. Calalang wrote similar letters to all of them. Arcilla-Margaroli made the same ownership clarifications and presented the necessary documents. Only LandBank Ortigas froze the company’s account.
In response to inquiries made by the NBI, the other banks stated that Calalang was not a signatory to the accounts. Neither did he present any court orders or any supporting documents to support his claim to the company accounts.
Subsequent investigations by the PNP, the NBI and fiscal’s offices, established that Calalang used falsified documents. Nine criminal cases have been filed against him by Arcilla-Margoli and her foreign partner. Arrest warrants have been issued against Calalang and he has been arraigned in one.
Despite all these, the company’s account at LandBank Ortigas remains frozen. The company has difficulty settling its accounts with JKG, a Dutch company providing the technology for manufacturing the plates.
The ownership dispute is not the only matter holding back printing of the plates.
OMI-JKG has printed millions of plates for the LTO. Recently, however, the LTO apparently lost its copy of the comma separated values (CSV) files vital for the printing of half-a-million pairs of license plates. The blank plates were delivered by OMI-JKG to the LTO, but the government agency has failed to pay the company P470 million due. Unless paid, the private company refused to furnish the LTO copies of the lost CSV files.
The issues just seem to accumulate while motorists wait endlessly for license plates to become available.