Saturday, May 24, 2008 [ philstar.com ]
CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga – United Parcels Service (UPS), the world’s largest express carrier and largest package delivery company, will reduce its daily flights here from 10 to only two, and trim down its personnel from 200 to 70 once it moves its intra-Asia hub to China in 2010.
But officials of the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) insist it’s not all bad news when they clarified yesterday that UPS is not uprooting itself from this freeport as it plans to replace its intra-Asia hub here with a logistics hub whose reach would be global.
“When they (UPS) officials came to inform me about the plan to transfer their intra-Asia hub to China, they assured me that Clark will nevertheless remain a strategic and long-time partner,” CIAC chief executive officer and chairman Victor Jose Luciano told The STAR.
He said that UPS has invested some $100 million in its local facility since it was established here in 2001.
Luciano said that CIAC and UPS have started talks on a possible joint venture for the establishment of the logistics hub at its 2,300-square meter facility at the aviation complex here.
Luciano and vice president for operations Bienvenido Manga said UPS officials have already informed them of plans to “build up” a logistics hub here similar to its “supply chain solution” logistics center in Louisville, Kentucky in the US.
“The Philippine gateway of UPS will remain at Clark,” Manga said.
“It’s a business decision, because about 75 percent of its deliveries are in North Asia, including China, Japan and Korea. Only 25 percent are in Southeast Asia. UPS is merely responding to business realities,” Luciano said.
He explained that the intra-Asia hub handles mostly packet and package deliveries, while the proposed logistics hub would handle big cargo.
“That’s exactly what was envisioned by President Arroyo here: a logistics hub,” he said.
“Eventually, the UPS logistics hub at Clark will take in giant commercial airlines for big cargo whose destinations are in the West such as Europe and the United States, and South Asia such as Australia, New Zealand and other countries that make Clark ideal for a logistics base,” Luciano said.
For his part, Manga explained that the logistics hub eyed by UPS here would require the construction of warehouses for big cargo. “Big companies are expected to stock these warehouses with their products so that they could be retrieved and flown immediately to customers who order them via the Internet,” he said.
UPS started operations here in 2001. In a press statement issued during the inauguration of its facilities in April 2002, UPS quoted MergeGlobal as saying that the intra-Asia market “is expected to grow at a rate of 16.8 percent annually through 2005” and that Southeast Asia’s air cargo traffic would increase by seven to eight percent.
Luciano said that apparently, such projections did not materialize.
In a related development, multi-sectoral groups from various parts of Central Luzon, including the Clark Investors and Locators Association (CILA), earlier sent Malacañang a manifesto seeking to liberalize air policies at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) here by issuing Executive Order 500-B which they proposed to the President last year.
“It is unfortunate that air access to the Philippines is not only inadequate, it is severely limited by an antiquated regulatory regime that seeks to preserve certain advantages for a select few at the expense of those who need to fly,” said Pampanga first district Rep. Carmelo Lazatin, who was among those who signed the manifesto.
“Businessmen usually expect that there are at least two daily flights, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon direct to any destination where they are interested in doing business,” he added.
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