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President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. ordered the transport department to fast-track the service contract agreement between the agency and Sumitomo Corp.-Thales Corp., maintenance provider of the country’s air traffic system
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Assets of Ninoy Aquino International Airport will not be privatized, transport secretary Jaime Bautista clarified, noting it’s the management of the airport that will be bidded out
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has ordered the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to fast-track the service contract agreement between the agency and Sumitomo Corp.-Thales Corp., maintenance provider of the country’s air traffic system.
In a briefing on Tuesday (Jan 24), Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said he met with Marcos to provide recommendations on improving the Communication, Navigation and Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) system to avoid a repeat of the airspace shutdown on January 1.
The warranty on the CNS/ATM equipment and services expired in 2020, two years after the system was operated.
“The President is very much aware of what happened, and he supports our recommendation to implement future requirements necessary for the upgrade or improvement of the CNS/ATM system, which includes hardware and software maintenance, hardware replacement, ultimate fallback system for software redundancy and the need for an independent CNS/ATM in a separate location,” Bautista explained.
“The President also instructed us to continue the maintenance of all the existing equipment of the CNS/ATM. At the same time, he wants us to fast track the maintenance agreement with Sumitomo and Thales who [is] the provider of the system,” he added.
NAIA privatization
Meanwhile, Bautista clarified that assets of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) will not be privatized. This, after Marcos on Monday said his administration has no plans of pursuing privatization of Ninoy Aquino International Airport, which seems contrary to Bautista’s earlier declaration that the DOTr is preparing to privatize NAIA.
“You cannot privatize an airport, to begin with. A private firm cannot own the airport,” Marcos noted.
“Ang ibig sabihin ng President, hindi naman natin ibibigay sa private sector yung assets ng NAIA. (What the President meant was that NAIA assets won’t be taken over by the private sector.) Ang ibig niyang sabihin (He meant) it’s the private sector who will manage the operations through a concession agreement,” Bautista said.
He noted this arrangement is already in effect in two airports–Clark International Airport and Mactan-Cebu International Airport—whose operations and maintenance have been awarded to the private sector.
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