THURSDAY: MAY 26, 2016
B6
BUSINESS business@thestandard.com.ph extrastory2000@gmail.com
PAL calls for bigger and modern airport By Darwin G. Amojelar
PHILIPPINE Airlines wants president-inwaiting Rodrigo Duterte to decongest the Ninoy Aquino International Airport by building a new one in Pasay City or nearby area and further develop the Clark International Airport. “We hope there would be a better airport and aviation-related infrastructure so that we can continue to grow because the open skies will be implemented and for us to be able to enjoy the benefit of the Asean open skies, we should have the facilities that we need,” PAL president and chief operating officer Jaime Bautista told reporters Tuesday night.
He said the Naia was congested with over 40 movements per hour, “so we cannot grow the market.” The Transportation Department earlier proposed the construction of an international airport in Sangley, Cavite province, while conglomerate San Miguel Corp. was looking at a reclamation area in Manila Bay. Bautista said PAL was taking
delivery of more airplanes that would require additional aviation infrastructure. “If there would be no infrastructure and if there are no support infrastructure, our airplanes would just be parked. Our investment would be a waste,” he added. PAL earlier signed a $1.8-billion aircraft purchase agreement with Airbus for six A350-900 jets, with six purchase options, worth another $1.8 billion. The first A350 is scheduled to be delivered in 2018, which will be used on new routes to North America and Europe. PAL is also expecting the delivery of five A32s and two Boeing 777-300 ER this year. The PAL executive said the new government should further de-
velop the Clark airport. “It’s ready but it lacks some infrastructure like fueling facilities should be improved. There should be more support industries. For example, airline catering, airline ground handling, maintenance and engineering. There should be more of those industries or companies in Clark,” Bautista said. Airlines operating in Clark include Qatar Airways, Cebu Pacific, Emirates Airlines, TigerAir, Jin Air, Asiana Airlines, Dragon Air and AirAsia Berhad. PAL parent firm PAL Holdings Inc. earlier reported a net profit of P2.71 billon in the January-toMarch period, down 28 percent from P3.78 billion registered in the same period last year.
Home Health seminar. Home Health Care, a pioneer in assisted living facility for seniors in the country, holds a seminar at the Century
Park Hotel in Manila on how to set up a nursing home and proper care for the elderly. Dubbed Health Care@Home, the whole day event was attended by physicians, nurses and entrepreneurs. HHC president Mary Jean Guno is shown sharing Home Health’s more than a decade experience in the field.
PLDT ahead in fixed line business PLDT Inc. said on Thursday it remains the leader in fixed broadband in the country after acquiring more subscribers six times than rival Globe Telecom Inc. in the first quarter of the year. PLDT HOME commands a market share of around 70 percent in the first quarter as it continues to offer digital services to its nearly 1.3 million wired broadband customers. Rival Globe had 650,064 wired broadband subscribers at endMarch. Broadband and data revenues now account for 53 percent of total PLDT HOME revenues at P4.23 billion as of end-March. “PLDT has posted strong gains in data, broadband and digital services,” PLDT chairman and chief executive Manuel Pangilinan said. “Our experience in the fixed line business shows how growth can be restored by progressively building up our data and broadband revenues to critical mass,” he added. PLDT executive vice president and head of consumer business Ariel Fermin added “PLDT HOME had a good head start, having been growing in revenues for five consecutive years now with its unmatched digital services and compelling content.” “We provide customers with the most number of home entertainment services running on broadband led by PLDT HOME DSL and PLDT HOME Fibr that serve as the foundation for value-added services such as linear IPTV with Cignal TV, catch up TV with Fox, and video on demand as offered by iflix. These services are available at home and on mobile devices,” he said. Darwin G. Amojelar
Grace chose the wrong islands DURING the course of the recent political campaign Grace Poe made some statements that either were inaccurate or did not reflect reality. One of Amazing Grace’s unrealistic statements was made by her on the occasion of her sortie in Iloilo. It related to the connection—particularly economic—between Iloilo and its island neighbor, Guimaras. “When I am elected President,” candidate Poe declared, “I will order the construction of a bridge between Iloilo and Guimaras. The bridge would be very beneficial, she said, for the growth of trade between Guimaras and Panay Island and the development of the area’s tourism. It would be one of her administration’s infrastructure priorities. There can be no denying the value derived from integrating the economy of Guimaras— the source of some of the most delicious mangoes in this country—into the prosperous Panay economy, which is made up of the economies of Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan and Antique. The tourism and mango industries of Guimaras can definitely benefit from a bridge link to the much larger island to the northwest. But that is the view from Guimaras. Unfortunately, no one seems to have told
Fernando Poe Jr.’s daughter about costbenefit ratios, which adjudges the value of an investment to an investing institution—a government or a corporation—by measuring the benefit generated by a project against the amount to be spent. Being a structure over water, an Iloilo-Guimaras bridge would be very costly. Would the benefit to the Philippine economy be likely to be at least commensurate? Almost certainly not. The benefit to be derived by the Panay provinces from a structural link to Guimaras would at this stage be minimal. I spoke earlier of realism. Again, no one appears to have told Grace Poe of the unrealism of an Iloilo-Guimaras bridge from the engineering—let alone the financial— standpoint. I don’t know the exact nautical distance between Iloilo and Guimaras; all I know is that it is a large distance. A sufficiently long look at a map will confirm this. Clearly, a bridge link between Panay Island and Guimaras is a no-no from both the economic and engineering standpoints. If she believed—as she apparently did—in the value of installing bridge links between the major islands of this archipelagic country, Amazing Grace was looking at the wrong pair of islands. She should have been looking, instead, at the islands of Negros and Cebu.
The fact of the matter is that a bridge across the Tanon Strait, to link Negros and Cebu, is long overdue. Cebu and Negros are two of the most progressive and most populous of this country’s twenty-or-so major islands. Cebu contains the Philippines’ second most important metropolis and is to the southern half of the Philippines what the National Capital Region is to its northern half. Negros, composed of the provinces of Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental (recently designated as the Negros Island Region), is the center of this country’s sugar industry and is a supplier of energy to the Central Visayas region. Linkage of the two islands would create an economic powerhouse outside Luzon. With the existing efficient ferry service between Iloilo City and Bacolod, Cebu would become effectively linked to Panay, and with the regular shipping service between Dumaguete and the parts of Dipolog and Cagayan de Oro, Panay would become linked to Northern Mindanao via a land-sea transport corridor. Clearly, from the standpoint of cost-benefit analysis, a bridge linking the islands of Cebu and Negros would be an eminently sound proposition. From the engineering standpoint, a bridge link between Cebu and Negros would
likewise be a sound proposition. Two of the longest maritime bridges in the world—those spanning the Douro River in Portugal and the Delaware River in eastern US—are longer than 20 kilometers, whereas the distance between Cebu and Negros at their closest points—Amlan in Negros Oriental and Bato in Cebu—are, to the best of my knowledge, only around eight kilometers. Tanon Strait is not said to be very deep. In any event, in this age of engineering marvels, an eightkilometer bridge over not particularly deep water is a highly doable project. Would financing be available for a CebuNegros bridge project? Very definitely. If the project is not added to the PPP (Public-Private Partnership) program, it can be put out to international tender or it can be undertaken by a consortium of Philippine and foreign contractors. A bridge linking Cebu and Negos is long overdue. One knows it, when, with binoculars, people at the narrowest points of the two islands can watch one another’s activities. Going back to Grace Poe, she said the right thing when she suggested that our islands should be linked by bridges wherever possible. But she chose the wrong islands. E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com