Phl airports, navigation systems need upgrade

CEBU, Philippines - To fully prepare for the upcoming Asean Economic Community (AEC) by 2015, the Philippine government has to make critical investments in airport infrastructure facilities and air navigation system.

This is according to Adoracion Navarro, senior research fellow of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), who said that infrastructure and logistics are vital in the free flow of goods and services, e-commerce, infrastructure development, and enhanced participation of the country in global supply networks.

Navarro pointed out that congestion in airport terminal, takeoff and landing capacity constraints, and lack of technical capacity are few of the infrastructure problems in the air transport industry.

Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) 1 served 7.5 million passengers in 2012 though its capacity could only bear 5.5 million passengers. It is also designed to accommodate 36 aircraft movements, both takeoff and landing, per hour but served 50 aircrafts every hour in the summer of last year.

The Philippines has limited open skies agreements with two ASEAN countries namely Vietnam and Thailand and with two non-ASEAN countries such as China and US.

Navarro said that the lack of airport space makes transport services unattractive to investors although there are no legislative restrictions on foreign aviation firms to provide their own or third-party ground handling, cargo handling and warehousing services.

He said that apart from the adoption of open skies policy which may be on track, the government also has to focus on the still uneven playing field in Philippine aviation market which the new entrants have to contend with taking into account the domination of the Philippine Airlines (PAL).

Among the major reforms that evolved in commercial aviation included the privatization of the PAL, the former national flag carrier, in 1992 and the liberalization and deregulation of air transport carrier services in 1995.

Navarro added that such reforms accounted a significant contribution to the entry of more players in commercial aviation, having a total of eight passenger airlines currently operating in the Philippines at present including PAL.

He identified AirPhil Express, Cebu Pacific, Sea Air and Zest Air as the four low-cost carriers that have both domestic and international services while Jetstar, Tiger Airways, and Air Asia are the three international low-cost carriers operate in the country.

The Philippines ranked 98th out of 144 countries in terms of quality of overall infrastructure in the Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013 of the World Economic Forum. It placed 120th in quality of port infrastructure and 112th in quality of air infrastructure. —  (FREEMAN)