43 firms eye bid for new Clark airport terminal

MANILA, Philippines - Over 40 local and foreign companies have expressed interest in bidding for the construction of a new terminal building for the expansion of the Clark International Airport, a project two decades in the making, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) said yesterday.

BCDA is kicking off the multi-phase Clark International Airport expansion with a new passenger terminal building capable of handling eight million passengers a year, expanding the airport’s capacity to 12 million from the existing 4.2 million passengers per year. 

The P12.55-billion project attracted 43 local and international prospective bidders, seven of which have already bought bid documents. 

Three of the seven prospective bidders that purchased bid documents are Chinese firms. They are Qingjian Group Co. Ltd., China Harbour Engineering Co. Ltd. and China State Construction Engineering Corp. 

The four other firms which bought the bid documents are Tokwing Construction Corp., R-II Builders Inc., First Balfour Inc. and Datem joint venture and a Megawide-GMR joint venture.

Submission of the bid documents is set on Oct. 23, 2017.

The new terminal building is expected to break ground in the fourth quarter of 2017 and is targeted to be operational in 2020.

Some prospective bidders who attended the pre-bid conference yesterday clamored for an extension of the submission of the bid documents.

BCDA senior vice president for business development and operations Joshua Bingcang said they will study if there is merit in extending the deadline.

However, Bingcang said the government is keen to start the project within the initially targeted timeframe.   

“We are going to do this in the most professional and most transparent way possible. What we want to ensure here is that the quality of the new facility that we’re building in Clark is really at par with the best in the world,” BCDA president and CEO Vivencio Dizon said.

Dizon said the project is the first hybrid project under the Duterte administration. Under the hybrid public-private partnership model, the government will finance the construction of the infrastructure, while operations and maintenance will be auctioned to the private sector.

 “The Clark airport project is probably the longest planned airport project in the world. The planning of the Clark airport project started way back in the 1990s, after the US left then Clark airbase. 20 plus years after, we’re finally going full steam ahead with the development of the Clark International Airport,” Dizon said.

The government is pushing for the development of the Clark airport to serve as an alternative to the congested Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

“We do need  a secondary gateway and you cannot replace NAIA just like that,” Dizon said.