The new CRK terminal building. Photo courtesy of BCDA
CLARK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT – Apparently relegated to the sidelines in the affairs of this premier airport with the turnover of its operation and management to a private consortium, the Clark International Airport Corp. is seeking to regain lost ground.
Barely into his second month as CIAC president-CEO, Aaron Aquino, former chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, had requested the Department of Transportation to give CIAC oversight functions over the CRK.
It is the DOTr that is vested with maintaining policy supervision and operational control over CRK as mandated by Executive Order 14 signed by President Duterte on February 28, 2017.
The same EO reverted CIAC to being a subsidiary of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, for a third time since its creation in 1994. At other times CIAC was under the Clark Development Corp. and the then-Department of Transportation and Communications.
In his letter to Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade last June 16, Aquino sought to make CIAC the “implementing arm of DOTr in the implementation of its oversight functions over the CRK operations.”
Aquino claimed that the consortium awarded the operations and management of the CRK, Luzon International Premier Airport Development Corp. “had not been recognizing the authority of CIAC over the Clark Civil Aviation Complex as mandated by EO716.”
Executive Order 716 signed on April 3, 2008 by then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo also transformed CIAC into a subsidiary of BCDA and mandated:
“(Section 5) – CIAC shall only engage in aviation, aviation-related services, and aviation-related logistics activities. All lease and business arrangements pertaining to the said services /activities shall now be solely undertaken by CIAC; and
“(Section 6) — The Clark Civil Aviation Complex (CCAC) shall comprise the area of two thousand two hundred (2,200) hectares, and shall be under the jurisdiction of the CIAC.”
Both sections were upheld in Duterte’s EO 14, specifically in “Section 3. Mandate of CIAC – The CIAC shall only engage in civil aviation, aviation-related services and aviation-related logistics activities within CCAC and the Clark Industrial Estate 5, as defined in EO 716…”
LIPAD
Aquino also said that CIAC had been excluded from the operation of CRK since being privatized to LIPAD, as well as from its new passenger terminal which is nearing completion.
The LIPAD consortium consists of Filinvest Development Corp., JG Summit Holdings Inc., Philippine Airport Ground Support Solutions Inc. and Changi Airports Philippines Pte. Ltd.
According to Aquino, CIAC is also not getting any share of income that LIPAD generated from a 25-year contract to operate and maintain CRK and to manage 810 hectares of the aviation complex from January 2019.
In a June 13 letter to Aquino, LIPAD CEO Bi Yong Chungunco said it was the DOTr that granted the consortium the franchise to operate and maintain CRK, and “as such, LIPAD remains under the regulatory supervision of DOTr.”
A CIAC source said a meeting has been set for August 6 among Aquino, Tugade and BCDA president-CEO Vince Dizon.
In a letter to Dizon last month, Aquino requested a 10 percent share for CIAC of the gross revenue earned from the CRK operation to “ensure the viability of CIAC” claiming that the state-owned corporation lost money with the CRK transfer to LIPAD.
Security
Aside from oversight functions over airport operations, Aquino also sought security control over the aviation complex, including the issuance of access passes that CIAC used to do.
“The CIAC, under its mandate, can be assured that the performance of LIPAD meets the required performance standards of airport operations under existing laws, rules and issuances and in furtherance of the full development of the CCAC, in accordance with its approved master plan,” so was Aquino quoted as saying. —With media reports
