Sec. Mar Roxas to meet with Takenaka, Japanese corporation, to revamp NAIA

The government continues to pursue negotiation with Takenaka as Secretary of Transportation and Communications Mar Roxas is set to travel to Japan next week to meet top officials Takenaka Corp., the original contractor of the NAIA Terminal 3 facility to hasten the government’s goal of making NAIA T3 fully operational within the next 12 months.

The government and Takenaka are at a point of agreeing on the contract price for the installation and rehabilitation of the 23 systems necessary to make the NAIA T3 fully operational in the manner it was intended to operate.

The Memorandum of Agreement is expected to be signed and to be followed by drafting of the Terms of Reference.

Roxas said that from the initial cost of $40million to deliver the systems, the government is now close to agreeing with Takenaka to further reduce the cost of the systems to less than $10 million.

On top of the agenda for the meeting is the delivery of 23 airport systems critical to make T3 fully operational, and facilitate the transfer of some operations from NAIA T1.  Among these systems include Baggage Handling and Reconciliation System, Flight Information Display System, Building Management System, Local Area Network, Fire Alarm and Protection System, and Passenger Loading Bridges.

“We’ll discuss with Takenaka on how to bring the airport to 2012 standard because the airport was built in 2000,” Roxas said. “We’re negotiating with Takenaka to remove the ‘constructor’s lien’ clause in the contract to eliminate anymore pending legal issues that is preventing the government from making T3 fully operational.”

As the original contractor that built T3, Takenaka has not received the full payment from Piatco, and could block the government from taking full control of NAIA T3. The removal of the “constructor’s lien” in the contract would hasten the full operation of the airport either by end of the year or early 2013.

The meeting is an offshoot of the decision made by Singapore High Court late last year upholding the ruling of the International Chamber of Commerce’s abitration tribunal dismissing the petition of Piatco for compensation.