The Philippine Supreme Court (SC) confirmed the decision made in September last year, by which the government shall pay a compensation to the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. Inc. (Piatco) no lower than US$510 million for  the expropiation of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 concession.

The Office Solicitor General (OSG) tried to lower the amount of compensation to US$104 million but the SC rejected the plea and stood firm on its decision. As a result, just the compensation reaches US$267,493,617.26 as of December 2004 plus annual interest of 12 percent from September 2006 and another annual interest of six percent from July 2013 until full payment.

Piatco also sought higher compensation and inclusion of attendant cost and value of depreciation and deterioration to a total of US$106.9 million, but the appeal was rejected.

The SC also dismissed the appeal of Piatco to include in the just compensation award the P1,784,704,634.23 in taxes being collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. 

A consortium formed by Paircargo (a long time Philippine cargo handler at NAIA), Globe Ground (Lufthansa Airlines' wholly owned ground handling subsidiary), and Security Bank (the 13th largest bank in the Philippines), won the concession to finance, construct, operate and maintain IPT3 on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis. In February 1997, the consortium established the project company, Philippine International Air Terminals Corporation (PIATCO), and in July 1997, the Government, through DOTC/MIAA, and PIATCO entered into a Concession Agreement for the project. During 1999 and 2000, Flughafen Frankfurt Main AG (Fraport), owner and operator of Frankfurt airport, acquired shares of PIATCO and became a major sponsor of the project.