P186B facelift of Clark airport proposed
Lim said said the agency may take a year to vet the proposal which was submitted in January. The proposal will have to undergo scrutiny by the National Economic and Development Authority.
Lim said the proposal calls for the improvement of current facilities and will increase the terminal’s capacity to 36 million passengers per annum. The facelift will be done in five phases.
The contract on the operations and maintenance of the airport will cover a concession period of 50 years.
The proposal comes at a time when the DOTr is pushing for the establishment of another airport in the greater Manila area to ease the congestion at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
The DOTr also has a mid-term plan of expanding the NAIA to accommodate 50 million passengers per year.
Alex Cauguiran, Clark International Airport Authority (CIAC) president, meanwhile reiterated the need to upgrade the existing facility of Clark International Airport.
The CIAC is working on the release of the budget to build Terminal-2 of Clark.
The new Clark airport terminal was designed by French firm Aéroports de Paris to have a capacity of 8 million passengers which may be later expanded to accommodate a total of 16 million passengers.
Caugiran said Clark serves as the gateway of the north and would complement the proposed plans of putting up another international airport in Bulacan and Cavite.
All-Asia Resources and Reclamation Corp. (ARRC), proponent of the Cavite airport, proposes to include an economic zone component in its project.
Edmundo Lim, ARRC vice chairman, said ARRC’s proposal includes the creation of a seaport, apart from the airport, that will be built off 2,500 hectares of reclaimed land.
Lim said the airport, to be located in Cavite’s Sangley Point, can help solve the airport, seaport and traffic congestion in NAIA, South Harbor and the roads of Metro Manila.
Sangly is the “best option” to address all congestion in Manila, he said.
“Sangley’s location is the key. Sangley will serve the southern part of Metro Manila as well as the progressive region Calabarzon while we believe that Clark should serve the north and must therefore be significantly upgraded in terms of terminal and infrastructure development,” Lim said.
“Our proposed project will make Metro Manila and its surrounding environs a better place to live, work, and travel in. You will see almost no container trucks on the road and going to the airport will be easier because Sangley is the best location there is,” added Wilson Tieng, ARRC chairman, in a statement.
ARRC said it will take only a few minutes from Roxas boulevard to the proposed international airport. Roxas boulevard is also accessible via the Skyway from Muntinglupa and with the soon-to-be completed connector road from NLEX and Port Area.
ARRC expects to finish the airport component of the gateway project within five years from getting the notice to proceed, which under its proposal, will be “without using a single government centavo.”
“This includes the reclamation portion which a huge Chinese company will undertake on a turnkey basis,” ARRC said.
But before this, he said, All-Asia had also submitted a separate unsolicited proposal to rehabilitate and develop the current Danilo Atienza airport in Sangley to absorb NAIA’s general aviation and smaller low-cost-carriers, including Skyjet which the Tieng Group owns.
“We can finish this smaller project at our own expense within one year. This means NAIA should be able to handle more commercial flights by next year if we get the go-signal from the government this month, for example,” ARCC said.
The Danilo Atienza runway will then be the third runway for All-Asia’s international airport.
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