Subic Eyed As Joint PH-US Air Force Base
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT — Plans to make the Subic Bay International Airport (SBIA) into a recreational theme park has been frozen by the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) as both the US and Philippine militaries are mulling its use as a forward base.
The plan is to use the airport for joint operations of the Philippine Air Force and the US Air Force Pacific alliance to maintain regional balance amid the territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea.
Some long-term programs adopted by the agency earlier this year are being modified in view of the current economic changes affecting the Freeport, SBMA Chairman Roberto Garcia said.
The Freeport’s five-year strategic plan (2012-2016) was to convert the 200-hectare SBIA into a tourism hub with amenities such as hotel-casino entertainment complex, science and technology park, duty free shops, convention center, waterfront and luxury villas, family hotels, golf course, business process outsourcing (BPO) city, theme park, yacht club, condominiums and SBMA corporate headquarters.
Amid strong opposition from public and private sectors, the agency said then that it would proceed with the plan to recover the huge financial losses of the Freeport.
But former SBMA chairman Richard Gordon lamented the plan to demolish the existing international airport in Subic “when the government cannot even operate fully an international airport in Manila,” referring perhaps to the terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
The SBMA has been a successful convention facility which hosted the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation in 1996 and hosted global companies such as FedEx, said Gordon, lamenting the fact that it has now been abandoned because officials there could not make use of the existing facilities there.
“They want the easy way out all the time. If they cannot develop Subic using the existing facilities, then they should all leave,” Gordon said.
He said promoting tourist destinations require "an airport to draw tourists." Gordon, now head of the Philippine National Red Cross, said he cannot understand why Subic, an already tourist haven with an airport will be removed of its major asset – the international airport.
