Sangley consortium waits for foreign partners to submit requirements

MANILA, Philippines — The consortium awarded to construct the $11 billion Sangley Point International Airport (SPIA) is waiting for its foreign parties to complete their requirements before it can commit to a timetable for the civil works of the gateway.

According to MacroAsia Corp. president and chief operating officer Eduardo Luis Luy, the SPIA Consortium has yet to close the deal on when it would begin the development stage for SPIA.

MacroAsia Corp. belongs to the SPIA Consortium that bagged the contract to build, operate and maintain the SPIA, a soon to rise airport in Cavite that can accommodate as many as 75 million passengers a year.

“Right now, we haven’t committed to a specific timeline. We are just really waiting from the other parties involved. There are other parties involved and we are just waiting from their end. I’m not really sure (what they lack, whether documents or funding), but I think it could be a mix of both,” Luy said.

In 2022, the provincial government of Cavite issued the notice of award to the SPIA Consortium. In approving the project, Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla said he expects the airport to create up to 60,000 jobs that pay above average salaries.

“The multiplier effect will be enormous: 60,000 employees earning above average salaries, most of which will be spent here. The economic activity is also inestimable: Cavite, as a province, will leap into a $12,000 per capita when this is done,” Remulla told The STAR.

Apart from MacroAsia, SPIA will be built by Virata-owned Cavitex Holdings Inc. and Yuchengco-led House of Investments Inc. from the local end.

On the foreign side, the airport will tap the expertise and resources of South Korea’s Samsung C&T Corp, Germany’s Munich Airport International and London-based Arup Group.

As for MacroAsia, the firm owned by taipan Lucio Tan projects business to grow in 2023 with the continuous lifting of border restrictions worldwide. Luy said the target for the year is to sustain its profitability by taking advantage of increased activities from airlines.

“I think (the growth drivers for) this year is the continued opening and lifting of travel restrictions and just trying to find other avenues of growth as well. We are discussing it internally so far and, hopefully, we will be able to grow the business,” Luy said.

MacroAsia raised its profit by 27 percent to P194.7 million in the nine months to September, as it relied on the rising demand for in-flight services and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of aircraft.

MacroAsia operates eight subsidiaries and three associates, most of which provide in-flight and ground services, as well as aircraft MRO for carriers.

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The article was originally published in PhilStar Global and written by Elijah Felice Rosales.