Chairman Vicencio Dizon of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) said the bidding offer for Phase I of the project will be published on July 21, after Pres. Duterte ordered that the terminal project be rushed.
Last May, Tugade was reported to have junked plans to bid out the huge project that would enable Clark airport to accommodate eight million passengers annually.
Tugade was quoted to have said: “If it’s bidding, what do you think will happen if a lot of investors want to participate? It will just prolong the development. That is why we will just do it ourselves. We could just bid out the operations and maintenance of the airport in the future.”
But at the Asia Chief Executive Officers (Asia CEO) forum held here the other day, Dizon said the foreign and local contractors could bid for the project after the publication of the bidding offer this July 21.
He said that two weeks ago, Pres. Duterte met with his Cabinet to approve the project that would need P12.2 billion more, as some P2.8 billion in the 2015 and 2016 budget had already been allocated for the project.
Dizon also clarified that the past Aquino administration was not able to finally approve the terminal project. “There was the design done by the Aeroporte de Paris, but this was discarded and the design was downsized, so that at the end of the Aquino administration, nothing was final,” he said.
He said that during the meeting two weeks ago, Duterte instructed his Cabinet to “just do it,” referring to the French-designed terminal project at Clark.
Dizon said that last March, he and Tugade were in France to inform Aeroporte de Paris officials that its design for the airport here would be implemented fully. “There was no agreement that the French grant for the design mandated French contractors,” he stressed.
Dizon said the upgrading of the Clark airport would significantly decongest the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) which, he noted, is already accommodating passengers beyond its normal capacity. He added that more flights here would also ease the traffic problem in Metro Manila.
