The Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA 3) should be fully operational by December 2010, said President Benigno Aquino III on Sunday.
The airport terminal, which was completed in 2006, remained unused for years before opening in partial capacity for selected domestic flights in 2008 (for Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines (PAL) subsidiaries Air Philippines and PAL Express). The project has been controversial for featuring in arbitration cases both in the United States and Singapore, as well as for numerous technical concerns.
A point of contention arose between the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (Piatco) and the Philippine government, when Piatco’s “build-operate-transfer” contract was cancelled by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2002, on the ground that unauthorized amendments were renegotiated back in 1998.
In December 2005, the Supreme Court (SC) ordered the government to pay the Piatco consortium P3 billion (USD58.8 million) as compensation if it wished to take over terminal operation. The government won an injunction against the order, but this was later lifted by an appeals court.
Recently however, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Singapore favored the Philippine government in the arbitration case regarding the NAIA-3 contract.
A similar resolution was reached by International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on the complaint of German investor Fraport AG, a member of the Piatco consortium.
“It is significant that in both of these arbitration cases they have lost and the government and the people have won and now they are now [going to] go back to our court system to be guided under our laws," Aquino said during a press conference at the La Salle Greenhills gymnasium.
“I'm waiting for a briefing on the details to move it forward so that Naia 3 can be used to its maximum capacity in time, and we’re targeting at the very least for the Christmas holidays.”
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