When vested interests hinder progress

The Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) is well on its way to becoming a modern, world-class gateway.

- MARY ANN LL. REYES

Just recently, the New NAIA Infrastructure Corp. (NNIC), the private consortium operating NAIA on behalf of the government, opened its brand-new Mezzanine Food Hall at Terminal 3, a 6,000-square-meter dining hub, as part of its effort to make traveling through NAIA more comfortable and convenient for passengers.

We would not have seen this kind of improvement if NAIA had still been operated by the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA).

Since the operation and rehabilitation of NAIA were turned over to the private sector in September 2024, the airport has undergone extensive upgrades — new power and airconditioning systems, rehabilitated drainage and cleaned waterways that have eliminated flooding, upgraded lighting and WiFi, improved immigration queuing, a centralized TNVS hub, automated parking, new escalators and walkalators, X-ray units and CCTV systems, wider curbsides and more parking spaces, the ongoing construction of Terminals 4 and 5 to expand capacity and reduce congestion, a new OFW lounge, and soon the roll-out of a new biometric passenger processing system. And all these at no cost to the government.

NNIC won in what has been described as the most transparent and competitively bidded public-private partnership (PPP) agreement, with the group winning the bid by offering the highest revenue share to the government of 82.16 percent, compared to the other bids (GMR at 33.3 percent and MIAC at 25.91 percent).

NNIC has already invested P3.25 billion in upgrades as part of a P72-billion, five-year modernization plan and has remitted P57 billion to the government in the first year and an estimated P911 billion over the 25-year concession period.