By Diego Morra
Ramon Ang’s takeover of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) is expected to generate P900 billion in revenue over 25 years, granting that the 15-year concession is extended by 10 years, and the consortium that he leads made a P30-billion upfront premium to sweeten the deal and promised to pay religiously the P2-billion annuity as well as the 82.16% revenue share to the government. Ang’s projections are on the high side since the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) managed to remit P22.05 billion in dividends to the government from 2010 to 2013.
Asked why he proposed 82.16% of the revenue will go to the government, Ang muttered that it was time to give the state a fair shake. Of course, he did not tell very polite business reporters and columnists that the state will not earn a single cent from passenger service charges (PSC) that comprise, at the minimum, 33.4% of the entire revenue stream of the NAIA. The company created to manage the airport, the New NAIA Infrastructure Corp. (NNIC), would gobble up all the PSC revenue, with government enjoying oversight functions over the huge caboodle of cash that NNIC will collect from passengers. Indeed, NNIC increased terminal fees, raise parking fees and office rentals on the very first day that Ang’s consortium took over NAIA.
Clean toilets, nice chairs, new elevators, escalators and other facilities should not be a reason for Ang to crow about since passengers are footing the bill and nothing was spent out of the goodness of Ang’s heart. With passengers paying through the nose, it is Ang’s duty to make the airport squeaky-clean. Frequent flyers judge a nation by the quality of its principal airports. Private corporations are not missionaries, and they are motivated not by a civic duty to do good and support the government. They are in the airports to make money, enjoy the perks embedded in the concession agreements, and put in their affiliates, subsidiaries and related interests to do business within the airports.
The SMC finance men must have figured out the best way to efficiently make money out of NAIA by excluding the government from sharing a decent centavo from the PSC. Other private corporations that now operate airports in other cities also raised terminal fees as soon as they are able, imposing additional financial burdens on travelers, both domestic and foreign, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their kin. The Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) board approved rate hikes at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport as part of the concession agreement with GMR Infrastructure and Megawide Construction Corp. Thus, the terminal fee for foreign travel rose from P550 to P750 and the fee for domestic travel increased from P200 to P300.
By raising the PSC, the Ang consortium will be guaranteed a wellspring of cash not subject to scrutiny by the administration despite the fact that the public never had the chance to contest the rate fixing process granted to the consortium. Moreover, Ang’s rentier capital could be bloated by skyrocketing increases in aeronautical charges that were 74% of total revenues in 2022. This includes the PSC for international and domestic passengers, landing and take-off charges, tacking fees, aircraft parking fees, cargo charges, and check-in counter charges, which the Ang consortium can raise within the concession period. This could result in higher airfares and other service charges for passengers. It would be impossible for airlines to absorb the higher PSC. The traveler will have to grin and bear the trauma of paying more than he or she should, thanks to a business-friendly administration.
Since many people are not persuaded by Ang’s less-than-glib oratory, it is but expected that the groups led by law dean Sol Derequito Mawis, former Ateneo de Manila dean Antonio La Vina and lawyer Joel Butuyan, along with the Ugnayan ng mga Lumalaban sa Airport Privatization (ULAP) of lawyer Rico V. Domingo, as well as the Movement Against Disinformation, the Makabayan Coalition, Negosyo Advocates, PARA Commuters’ Network and SUKI Network would push for the scrapping of Ang’s sweetheart deal which came to fruition through the kindness of the Department of Economy, Planning and Development (DepDEV), formerly NEDA, and the PPP and bid and awards committee that approved the deal with Ang just 47 days, a record for the bureaucracy that thrives on sloth. Aside from their petitions before the Supreme Court (SC), ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio and Kabataan Rep. Renee Co filed House Resolution No. 2316 seeking an inquiry into the grant of a concession agreement to Ang and his partners.
It is interesting to note that the congressional may also shed light on the partners of Ang, who should have been immediately disqualified from bidding for the operation of NAIA since he is already developing the 2,500-hectare New Manila International Airport (NMIA) in Bulakan, Bulacan, which will not only compete with NAIA but may replace it in the future should succeeding administrations find the large NAIA property could be sold to generate more funds for government operations. NMIA could very well function as private port, too, for SMC and as a venue for races of sports cars. Tinio and Co, who will be joined by Gabriela Rep. Sarah Elago, may scrutinize as well Ang’s partners who were apparently brought in for Ang to avoid being riddled with questions about conflict of interest.
Aside from SMC, the consortium has the following partners: RMM Asian Logistics, Inc.; RLW Aviation Development, Inc., and; Incheon International Airport Group. Incheon is supposed to have monopolized air and road transport systems in Metro Manila, Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog. RMM and RLM were apparently organized for the purpose of bagging the NAIA concession agreement and both had paid up capital of P6.3-million. RMM owner, Raymond Miller Moreno, was the former president of Liberty Telecoms that SMC previously owned, Moreno was charged in the US for tax evasion in 1987. RLW’s owner, Robert Lee Wong, doesn’t figure in the business radar while Incheon International Airport Corp., was slapped by the South Korean government with 26 cases of tax evasion covering $155.8 million in 2014. Do they appear to be good company for the ever-compassionate and patriotic Ang?
