DAVAO CITY– During the first Mindanao Infrastructure Summit on October 10, Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime Bautista announced that the Davao International Airport is to be privatized and this move is set to roll with the signing of an agreement with the International Finance Group (IFG) who will serve as the transactional adviser for the operations and maintenance of the airport.
“They (IFC) will start preparing the terms of reference just like what we did in NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) . We appointed ADB (Asian Development Bank) as our transactional adviser,” Bautista said.
The Transportation Secretary said that the ADB took them six months to draft the Terms of Reference for NAIA which was approved by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) after six weeks.
“Then we did the roadshow, we did the bidding in December so the NAIA privatization took us 13 months and in Davao we are looking at the same time period,” Bautista added.
The privatization is seen as a means to help develop DIA into a world-class airport similar to the ones done in the airports of Clark and Mactan in Cebu. (RGA)
