By Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio, Reporter
Cerberus Capital Management LP has submitted an unsolicited bid to operate the Subic Bay International Airport, a Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) official said on Monday.
The US investment firm proposed to “take over” operations of the Subic airport as a part of its plan to revitalize the power, which once formed a part of an even bigger US naval base before to its closure within the Nineties, SBMA Deputy Administrator Vicente A. Evidente, Jr. told a House of Representatives hearing.
“Cerberus has… submitted an unsolicited proposal to take over the Subic Bay International Airport,” he told lawmakers.
The US firm’s expansion plans at Subic Bay come amid renewed US interest in expanding its footprint within the Philippines amid China’s growing assertiveness within the South China Sea.
Cerberus already operates a part of a 310-hectare lot of a former South Korean-owned shipyard west of the airport for which it had submitted an unsolicited bid.
The US Marine Corps has already leased a 57,000-square-foot warehouse on the bay to stage vehicles and engineering equipment, while the US Navy can be eyeing a close-by 25,000-square-meter climate-controlled facility for lease, USNI News reported.
“There’s a everlasting forward deployed presence of US forces within the port of Subic Bay,” Mr. Evidente said. “There’s a continuing rotation of US Navy warships each time resulting from the incontrovertible fact that Scarborough Shoal is barely positioned 200 kilometers from the port.”
The Philippines and China have been at loggerheads over disputed features within the South China Sea, leading to clashes at sea as Manila pushes back against what it describes as Beijing’s encroachment of waters inside its exclusive economic zone.
Beijing claims nearly the entire strategic waterway via a U-shaped, Nineteen Forties nine-dash line map that overlaps with the exclusive waters of the Philippines and neighbors like Vietnam and Malaysia despite a 2016 ruling by the Everlasting Court of Arbitration in The Hague that voided its claims.