Skip NAIA, land at Clark

Skip NAIA, land at Clark | Daily Tribune

Manila International Airport Authority officials better work fast and furious overtime to rid the Ninoy Aquino International Airport of pests, rodents and other creatures that would betray the premiere gateway before the high-powered delegation of American CEOs in the US Presidential Trade and Investment Mission to the Philippines led by US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo arrives in Manila on 11 March.

Ahead of the delegation’s arrival in Manila, Bases Conversion Development Authority Chair Delfin Lorenzana and BCDA president and CEO Joshua Bingcang met with Raimondo and the heads and representatives of over 100 US firms at the Senior Leaders Seminar organized by the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. to pitch Clark as an investment destination.

There’s no better Philippine official to entice potential American business investors into the country exposed as he is to US officialdom, having been Defense Attaché from 2002 to 2004 and subsequently Head of the Office of Veteran Affairs at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. until June 2016.

His appointment as head of the BCDA, including the Clark Freeport and Special Economic Zone, which used to be the US’s operational Air Force base in the Far East and its largest US outside the US, makes Lorenzana particularly agreeable to Americans.

Development investment potentials presented by Lorenzana and the rest of the BCDA execs to US CEOs in Washington D.C. last month included the 296.5-acre Filinvest Innovation Park, a USD2-billion data center co-location facility, a USD172-million solid waste management and waste-to-energy project, and a USD17.9-million solar photovoltaic power plant located within New Clark City.

The BCDA execs also invited representatives of US companies to take a good look at investment opportunities in the USD152-million Clark National Food Hub along with road and transport infrastructure projects such as the USD3.17-billion Subic-Clark-Batangas Railway System, the USD100-million Clark Integrated Public Transport System, and the USD60-million expansion of Clark International Airport’s airside capabilities.

There will be enough to cogitate by delegation members who, White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said, will come over to see how US companies’ contributions to the Philippines’ innovation economy, connective infrastructure, clean energy transition, critical minerals sector, and food security could be enhanced.

Philippine Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez indicated that the US has offered assistance for the stalled Mindanao Railway project, with financing most likely coming from the US International Development Financial Corporation, likewise represented in the delegation arriving on Monday next week.

The US State Department’s investment climate assessment of the Philippines last year pointed out several issues that pose disincentives to investing in the country. These included, among other things, “poor infrastructure; high power costs; slow broadband connections; regulatory inconsistencies; a cumbersome bureaucracy, and corruption.”

That puts Clark in a bright spot. Perhaps the top US CEO delegation with Sec. Raimondo should land at Clark International Airport instead of NAIA, where airport personnel would probably still be smoking out pests and rodents by the time the trade and investment mission arrives.

Land in Clark, please

NAIA Terminal 1 was built 43 years ago, NAIA 2 25 years ago, and NAIA 3, where evidence of bedbug infestation and a playground for rats have emerged (one shudders to think what horrors would be unearthed in the two older terminals), 16 years ago. It will take some time until the NAIA rehabilitation contract bid winner, the consortium led by San Miguel Corporation, can start fixing up the airport system.

Thus, in the meantime, may we suggest that the delegates in the trade and investment mission — President Biden’s first — land in Clark and remain there for their brief, two-day visit to the country.