{"id":17327,"date":"2025-10-30T01:29:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T17:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/?p=17327"},"modified":"2025-10-30T01:29:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T17:29:02","slug":"naia-privatization-bigger-corruption-at-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/naia-privatization-bigger-corruption-at-play\/","title":{"rendered":"NAIA privatization: Bigger corruption at play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Letter to the Editor &#8211; Ramon Ang\u2019s recent claim that his New NAIA Infrastructure Corporation (NNIC) remitted \u20b157 billion to the government from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) is not proof of generosity or efficiency\u2014it is proof of bigger corruption at play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Marcos Jr administration and Ang are selling this as a success story. But in truth, that \u20b157 billion did not come from San Miguel Corporation\u2019s pockets. It came from the pockets of millions of ordinary passengers now paying far higher fees to utilize what used to be a publicly-operated airport. Every peso remitted to the government is part of what was collected from the people through steep increases in terminal and airline fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since NNIC took over NAIA in September 2024, airport fees have surged across the board:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Passenger terminal fees are up by 73% for international and 95% for domestic flights.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Landing, parking, and tacking fees for aircraft are up by as much as 1,400% &#8211; costs that airlines pass on to passengers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Rental rates for airport spaces nearly doubled, pushing food and service prices inside NAIA higher than ever.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These hikes hit over 50 million passengers a year. NNIC now earns at least \u20b112 billion annually from terminal fees alone, not yet counting its growing take from airlines and commercial tenants. Yet instead of revealing how much it profits, Ang highlights how much was \u201cremitted\u201d to the government\u2014masking the fact that the public is being squeezed to fund both government collection and private profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When NAIA was publicly managed under the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), the law required \u201creasonable\u201d rates. Under privatization, the private operator\u2019s interest is to maximize profit. This setup\u2014where the government surrenders control and consumers pay more so corporations rake in excessive profits\u2014is gross misuse of public authority for private gain. In short, it is corruption at play on a grand scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>NAIA\u2019s privatization is not reform. It is turning over a public utility to a private firm to profit from, cloaked in the language of modernization. SUKI Network urges the public and the media to look past the hype and expose how privatization is the neoliberal corruption of public purpose\u2014where public policy is used as an instrument of private enrichment, and makes the people pay the price over and over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A<strong>ng NAIA ay para sa mamamayan\u2014hindi para sa ganansya ng iilan.<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ang highlights how much was \u201cremitted\u201d to the government\u2014masking the fact that the public is being squeezed to fund both government collection and private profit.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":17329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-withbanner.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":1762363514,"_expiration-date-type":"draft","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[4,1218,14],"tags":[4124,2973,4126,4057,180,4125,116,83,336,2122,341],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17330,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17327\/revisions\/17330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}