THE START of the Bulacan airport’s operations has been pushed back to 2028 due to delays in construction, San Miguel Corp. (SMC) President and Chief Executive Officer Ramon S. Ang said.
“We are working closely with the government to help us, to allow us and give us some panambak (backfill),” he told reporters last week. “The construction has been delayed because we do not have it. If we can get that, then we can begin construction and make the airport ready to run.”
SMC expects to start development work for its P740-billion Bulacan International Airport or the New Manila International Airport (NMIA) project next year.
“When they suspended the Manila Bay reclamation, they also stopped sand sources, which affected us. We do not have backfill, which we use for construction,” he said.
In 2023, President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. ordered the suspension of all reclamation projects in Manila Bay pending review of their environmental effects.
Mr. Ang said SMC initially targeted to begin operations of the airport by 2027.
“This delay has incurred additional costs. This one-year delay cost us several hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Ang said. “If we can get the sand right now, we can begin the construction and make the airport ready to run by the first quarter of 2028.”
SMC is developing a 2,500-hectare property in Bulacan province into an aerotropolis featuring a world-class gateway that can handle 100 million passengers a year.
With the delays in the NMIA project, the soon-to-be-privatized Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) could get a boost, Nigel Paul C. Villarete, senior adviser on PPP (public-private partnership) at the technical advisory group Libra Konsult, Inc., said via Viber.
The SMC-led New NAIA Infrastructure Corp. is set to take over the operations of the country’s main gateway on Sept. 14. In March, it signed a P170.6-billion contract to operate, maintain and upgrade the country’s primary gateway for 25 years.
“Even with the completion of the Bulacan airport, or on its possible designation as the primary airport of the country, NAIA will still continue as an important national airport,” Mr. Villarete said.
Last week, SMC said it was on track to take over the operations of NAIA, outlining its plan for the airport such as spending between P3 billion and P5 billion for the construction of an off-ramp from the NAIA Expressway to Terminal 3. SMC had also proposed to charge vehicles a fee for using certain areas at the airport such as curbsides to address traffic congestion.
“I would expect NAIA to retain most of the national flights, while most of the international flights might be transferred to Bulacan. Thus, the current upgrades would surely boost NAIA’s capabilities, especially now that Bulacan (airport) is delayed,” Mr. Villarete said.
Rene S. Santiago, former president of the Transportation Science Society of the Philippines, said there should be a focus on upgrades on the airside at NAIA.
“The improvements would come when runways and taxiways are reconfigured plus aircraft-handling optimization,” he said.
However, Mr. Villarete said SMC’s proposal to implement curb pricing at NAIA is not expected to solve the issue of traffic.
“There are other airports in the world that (implement) curb pricing, but there are others that don’t, too. I think that’s fine, but it needs to be properly defined and communicated to the public,” he said. — Ashley Erika O. Jose