The P20.26-billion expansion project for the Bacolod-Silay Airport has started, Bacolod Rep. Evelio Leonardia announced yesterday.

The Department of Transportation and Communication launched the bidding process for the project with the publication of the required Invitation to Pre-Qualify and Bid in the country’s national newspapers Monday.

“Finally, here it is,” Leonardia said, while urging the people to continue being vigilant until the project is finished. “This is now reality, not ‘fantasy’ as someone had claimed when we first announced it,” he added.

The DOTC opened the bidding for “airport development, operations and maintenance” for the Bacolod-Silay Airport and five other regional airports in the Philippines.

It is inviting the private sector to undertake the projects  to “improve  services and enhance airside and landside facilities of the airports by entering into concession agreements.”

In its bidding announcement, the DOTC said that under these agreements, the concessionaires “shall take over the operations and maintenance of the airport, undertake immediate expansion of the passenger terminal building, apron, other landside and airside facilities and other requirements to cater to future demand.”

It also said the Bacolod-Silay International Airport is the eighth busiest airport in the Philippines in terms of passenger volume which has been growing at an average rate of 9.6 percent over the last five years.

Leonardia also said that last year, it handled 1.3-million passengers, way beyond its 800,000 capacity.  This overcrowding at the airport had made its expansion one of his priority agenda, he added. “When two to three flights converge there, you could hardly move inside the pre-departure area,” he also said, “It is really time to build a bigger airport.”

“We thank DOTC Secretary Jun (Joseph Emilio) Abaya for seeing and acting on our problem,” the Bacolod solon said, recalling that Abaya was the first cabinet secretary he sat down with when he assumed as congressman last year. “I brought to him our need for a bigger airport,” Leonardia said.

This is a nice Christmas gift to us, he added, noting that this is also the season when many Bacolenos and Negrenses come home through the BSA.

Last week, Leonardia launched a campaign for international flights to the  BSA, with the installation of the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine system. He said he told the airline companies that the BSA is now capable of processing international passengers, and urged them to consider making it part of their international traffic.*

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