BALI, Indonesia – I arrived in Ngurah Rai International Airport, the main airport of Bali, Indonesia early morning today, 07 June 2024, Friday, for some personal rest and recreation.
Bali is known as the “Island of the Gods.” In 2023, Bali hosted 5,273,258 international visitors and 9,877,911 domestic visitors, according to Indonesia’s Badan Pusat Statistik (Central Statistics Agency). 93, 481 visitors during the same period came from the Philippines.
With a high influx of visitor arrivals, it is therefore not surprising that Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport is Indonesia’s second busiest airport.
Airports, we often hear, are the country’s gateways to the world. It mirrors the country’s image. This is for a very good reason. A visitor’s first glimpse of a country is the airport, and a visitor’s last impression of a country is likewise the airport.
I call this the ‘airport experience.”
I find it unfortunate that we have not been able to maintain the significant strides we have made in our premier airport.
We were able to eliminate the incidents of tanim-bala in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in 2016 and by 2018 the NAIA entered the Top 10 Most Improved Airports of Skytrax World Airports.
Sadly, the state of the country’s main gateway went downhill thereafter. NAIA is named the 4th worst airport in Asia for business travellers in 2024 by business finance and lending research and information provider Businessfinancing.co.uk. Our airport has likewise been rated the 3rd most stressful airport in Asia by a report released by travel website hawaiianislands.com in 2022.
No wonder that many raised their eyebrows in disbelief when President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. had mentioned last week before the Filipino community in Brunei that an “upgraded airport” awaits our kababayans when they return to the Philippines. Ironically, there was an existing power outage at the NAIA the day this presidential announcement was made.
There is, however, truth to the President’s words.
The future of NAIA is promising with San Miguel Corporation’s New NAIA Infrastructure Corporation slated to takeover NAIA operations by September 2024. It will have a 15-year concession deal to operate, maintain, and rehabilitate the NAIA, with an option to extend for another 10 years.
While there are groups looking at privatization as passing on to consumers, in this case the passengers, the costs or the burden (which could be a subject of another column), let us see for now the forthcoming developments in the NAIA.
These are exciting times, and we are about to enter the exciting part.
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Dennis Ting is a former director at the Department of Budget and Management.
