‘Pocket open skies won’t hurt local carriers’

Monday, 10 January 2011 20:51   Mia M. Gonzalez / Reporter
Business Mirror

MALACAÑANG on Monday assured local carriers they will have some protection once it implements the Executive Order (EO) adopting a pocket open-skies policy.

Palace officials gave the assurance in response to the appeal of opposition Party-list Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo for Malacanang to carefully study the open skies policy since it may not be something the Philippines needs at this time.

“What we’d like to assure everybody is that the contents of that EO were studied carefully. It is not a product of something that happened on a whim or on caprice. We believe this would put forward our reform agenda. This is not something that was done whimsically,” said Deputy Presidential Spokesman Abigail Valte.

“Knowing the officials who were behind the drafting of that EO, they would make sure that of course the local carriers would be protected,” she added.

Secretary Ricky Carandang of the presidential communications office said that under the proposed EO on pocket open skies, “the proposals that we’re going to put forth as far as liberalization of aviation is concerned are very well thought out by the economic team so I don’t think he (Rep. Mikey Arroyo) has to worry about it.”

He added, “The local?carriers can be assured that we will do what we can to take into account, and balance, all the interests here.”

When asked, Carandang said that the slump in the stocks of local carriers, following the Palace announcement that the EO would be issued soon, is just a “natural reaction,” since “stocks always react? to uncertainty in a negative way. If you wait for the release of the actual EO,?then the market will be in a better position to evaluate whether or not it will help or hurt [local carriers].” ?

He cited the case of Cebu Pacific, which operates domestically and in countries where aviation is already deregulated but continues to fare well. “Cebu Pacific has shown that it’s able to operate in whatever environment exists, so that’s why the market shouldn’t be too worried about it.” ?

He said that “if the carrier is efficient and [can] compete overseas, I don’t? see why they should worry too much about this. Remember the reason we’re doing this. We want to bring in more tourists, we want to bring in more jobs, we?want to make fares eventually more competitive, both domestically and internationally, for the Filipinos who travel so there’s a very big plus to this which is why we’re looking at it in the first place.”