Aboitiz InfraCapital owns and operates the Mactan-Cebu International Airport.
The infrastructure arm of the billionaire Aboitiz family’s Aboitiz Equity Ventures won its third airport management contract, expanding their footprint across the Philippines amid a travel boom.
Aboitiz InfraCapital won a 30-year contract to upgrade and run an international airport on Panglao Island in the central Philippine province of Bohol, one of the country’s tourism hot spots. It will spend 4.5 billion pesos ($77 million) to upgrade the airport.
The company will start upgrading works on the airport next year and aims to boost the facility’s annual passenger handling capacity by 25% to 2.5 million within a year or two years and further to 3.9 million by 2030.
“This project is not just about upgrading facilities but also about boosting economic opportunities, enhancing tourism, and improving connectivity in the Visayas region, and we are excited to be a part of this initiative,” Cosette Canilao, president and CEO of Aboitiz InfraCapital, said in a statement.
The chocolate hills of Bohol is among the Philippines’ key tourist attractions.
The Panglao airport contract comes a month after the company was awarded a 30-year concession to upgrade an international airport in Misamis Oriental, a province in the southern island of Mindanao, the nation’s second biggest island. The Misamis Oriental airport project, which will start next April, will entail investments of 12.8 billion pesos.
The Philippine government is counting on private companies to upgrade and run its aging airport infrastructure. A consortium led by billionaire Ramon Ang’s San Miguel Corp. earlier this year took over the operations of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the country’s main gateway, in Manila. San Miguel will invest 171 billion pesos to modernize the airport.
In the coming months, the government is set to privatize two more international gateways: the Iloilo airport in central Philippines and the Puerto Princesa airport in the central western islands of Palawan, home to the 8.2-kilometer underground river, a Unesco World Heritage site. Canilao said Aboitiz InfraCapital is keen to bid for both airport projects.
Aboitiz InfraCapital has been doubling down on its investments in Philippine airports. In 2022, it bought the Mactan-Cebu International Airport from a joint venture company owned by tycoon Edgar Saavedra’s Megawide and India’s GMR Group for 25 billion pesos.
Led by Sabin Aboitiz, Aboitiz Equity is one of the leading Philippine conglomerates with interests in power, banking and financial services, food, and real estate. Sabin and his family have estimated $2.2 billion in net worth, placing them at No. 10 in the Forbes list of the Philippines’ 50 Richest when it was last published in August.
