The air operators represented as a whole by the signatory unions request the Comptroller’s Office to supervise the Minutes of Agreements (Minutes), signed between Lima Airport Partners (LAP) and the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC), with respect to the extension of the Jorge Chavez International Airport (AIJCH).
“We support the request of the Association of International Air Transport Companies (AETAI), so that the Comptroller General of the Republic (Comptroller) takes a conclusive position regarding the Act that would modify the contract awarded to LAP, allowing it to operate with two terminals in the Lima Airport, without following the corresponding legal procedures”, the statement states.
It is important to mention that any modification to the Concession Contract must comply with minimum legal requirements, such as the favorable opinion of the competent bodies in the matter: the DGAC, the Comptroller’s Office, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Ositran and, eventually, Proinversión.
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However, as they do not exist, at this time they make the modification currently proposed through an act unfeasible, which by itself would be null.
In 2001, LAP won the award for the airport with the proposal for a new and unique terminal, highlighting the benefits of integrating airport operations in the same infrastructure as opposed to operating with two or more terminals. Said competition factor, which favored LAP at the time, can only be modified through a formal process and in no way through an Act.
“LAP intends to justify the aforementioned modification, trying to subordinate the expansion to the growth in passenger demand. In this regard, we recall that this is illegal and contrary to the Concession Contract, since the contract itself states that it is a mandatory improvement that must be carried out “without taking into account the volume of traffic or any other factor”, They support the unions.
“To this we must add that the benefits highlighted by LAP at the time and included in Annex 6 of the Concession Contract are today ignored with the new dual operation proposal”, they add.
In this sense, the statement states that the intervention of the Comptroller will be key to being able to respond to public opinion on the legality of the Minutes signed between LAP and the MTC, where the only beneficiary would be LAP.
They also urge the Comptroller of “avoid harm to the public interest, which urgently requires a complete economic, productive and tourist reactivation; and not the detrimental modification of a project that has been delayed on an airport that belongs to all Peruvians and that, if accepted, would affect us with a much more complex and less efficient operation, with a new terminal with less capacity until 2035 , relegating us in the attempt to be the main hub in Latin America, one of the objectives sought with the original contract”.
