Over the past months, the Philippines has benefited from a steady stream of visits from foreign dignitaries including US President Barack Obama, US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser. More recently we were visited by a large number of high-powered delegates to the World Economic Forum. These visits reinforce the apparently spreading international perception that with its high GDP growth rates and moves against corruption, the Philippines may indeed be where the action is in the region, or at least the place that deserves yet another serious look-see. That’s the good news.
The not-so-good news is that nearly all of these delegates, for their first entry into and first impression of the Philippines, had to go through our beloved Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Beloved, because in spite of every characteristic that vividly demonstrates its rating as among the worst international airports on the planet, we cling to it with a mother’s unconditional love for her prodigal offspring. That may sound a tad harsh to some, but consider that only recently, VIP delegates and all others arriving at Naia were treated to the sweltering heat of our airport terminal, whose air conditioning system had finally given up—and at the height of summer at that! Perhaps we believe that “more fun in the Philippines” should begin with a complimentary welcome sauna for our visitors.
Now, according to reports, the search for an alternative international gateway is on. Actually, it has been on for nearly 20 years now. We were all much younger when this odyssey started, and hopefully we won’t yet be at heaven’s (or hell’s) door, or through it, when the search concludes. But at the rate things are moving, don’t bet on it.
However, if hope does spring eternal, an alternative that appears most hopeful and more immediately doable was the subject matter of a major conference last May 14 at Clark, titled “Clark: Reshaping Philippine Aviation—The Aerotropolis Concept.” The gist of the conference was a call for fully developing Clark as the country’s principal international aviation hub while simultaneously positioning it as the center of a new export manufacturing, commercial and residential urban development.
The plan would, as it were, knock several birds with one stone—i.e., provide a viable alternative to Naia in the shortest possible time, create a “magnet” to decongest Manila, accelerate growth and development of all communities between Clark and Manila, attract foreign investments to an area that has world-class air and seaport facilities in place (Subic), and create thousands of job opportunities.
Aerotropolis was thus presented as an idea whose time had come.
I agree—except that its time actually first came nearly 20 years ago. As one of the invited speakers to the conference, I presented a copy of an April 1995 committee report I had penned and submitted to President Fidel Ramos, who had appointed me to chair an ad hoc committee of Cabinet members (including the late trade secretary Roy Navarro and the then transportation secretary Jesus Garcia) to study and present a game plan for the logical development of the country’s international gateways going toward the year 2000.
Without going into detail, nearly every element that has been pointed out time and again to show the shortcomings of Naia (obsolete, only one runway, no area for expansion, located in the middle of a densely populated area, etc.) and nearly every reason for having an alternative international airport in the shortest possible time, and thus suggesting that it be Clark with its existing world-class runways and operational readiness, is in that memo. I had even introduced the phrase to describe a proposed dual airport system—one domestic (Naia) and one international (Clark): “just like Dulles and Reagan airports in Washington, DC,” based on my long years of residence there during my World Bank days. The specifics of a transition implementation plan, including the construction of a terminal at Clark on a modular basis to be phased, as visitor arrivals escalate over time, are there as well.
Much time has passed and not much has happened here, while all of our neighboring countries have proceeded with the construction of modern airport facilities. We seem frozen in our mantra that Clark is too far and a necessary rapid railway to and from it is too expensive to build. But Clark isn’t much farther from Manila than Narita is to Tokyo, or KL’s airport to Kuala Lumpur, or even Dulles from Washington, DC. The need for a rapid railway was to be answered by the original bona fide North Rail project, which the 1995 report envisioned as the launch pad for an intermodal transport system as well.
It’s time to think big. The Aerotropolis concept exemplifies that. Furthermore, the combined and coordinated development of Clark and Subic, with a land area significantly larger than Singapore, could easily expand beyond Aerotropolis toward Asean Megalopolis—a pivotal ace for our positioning in the imminent Asean Economic Cooperation system.
Roberto F. de Ocampo, OBE, is a former finance secretary and was Finance Minister of the Year in 1995, 1996 and 1997.