NAIA privatization investor sentiment unaffected by theft incident –DOTr

The recent theft incident involving Office for Transportation Security (OTS) personnel at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) did not affect investors’ appetite to participate in the government-initiated bidding to privatize the operations of the country’s main gateway, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said Friday.

“Actually walang masyadong sentiment ung investors eh. I never heard anybody from any of the groups who thinks that their interest has been affected,” Bautista told reporters at the sidelines of the pre-bid conference for the P170.6 billion NAIA Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project.

(Investors did not give it much thought.)

“Alam naman nila that this is an isolated case,” he said.

(They know it's an isolated case.)

The Department of Transportation disclosed that six groups bought bid documents to participate in the project.

The six groups were:

• GMR Airports International
• San Miguel Holdings Corp.
• Manila International Airport Consortium
• Spark 888 Management
• Asian Airport Consortium
• Cengiz Insaat Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S

Bautista said the winning bidder could assume responsibility for security and screening of passengers. Currently, the OTS was responsible for these matters.

The Transportation chief also said the concessionaire of the privatized NAIA should agree that “nobody should lose their job.”

Recently, three OTS personnel were under investigation after a foreigner's money went missing at the NAIA.

OTS officials inspected all personnel after the passenger complained that his $300 in cash went missing on September 8.

Upon checking the CCTV footage, they saw a 28-year-old contractual employee swallowing an object. Officials are now investigating whether the item was the missing cash.

The employee said she swallowed chocolates, not the missing $300. — DVM, GMA Integrated News