By Neil
Jerome Morales (The Philippine Star) | Updated July 15, 2013 - 12:00am
MANILA,
Philippines - SM Development Corp. (SMDC), the condominium builder of mall and
banking conglomerate SM Investments Corp., is pulling out of the deal to buy
the National Kidney Transplant Institute (NKTI) property in Quezon City.
The property
firm will instead focus on developing its land holdings in Metro Manila, its
top executive said.
SMDC
vice-chairman and CEO Henry Sy Jr. said the company which already paid around P300 million of the P783-million
purchase price of the property occupied by NKTI, has crafted a waiver but the
downpayment should be returned.
“If they do
not want (to sell the property), it’s okay for us because we have many
properties but they should return the money,” said Sy.
In October,
SMDC won the bidding for the two lots totaling 1.63 hectares offered by the
National Housing Authority (NHA).
The sale,
however was reportedly called off early this year after NKTI management reached
an agreement with NHA to revive negotiations involving the property.
As the legal
owner of the NKTI property, NHA sought for additional funds to pay off its own
obligations to other government-owned agencies like Housing Development Mutual
Fund or Pag-IBIG Fund.
NKTI said the
sales would put its operations in jeopardy. One of the two areas is currently
used as parking space while the other is the subject of a dispute involving
alleged illegal settlers.
Moving
forward, SMDC will focus on other projects.
For this
year, SMDC will spend approximately P20 billion in capital expenditures: P13
billion for project development and P7 billion for landbanking.
The
condominium builder will launch four new projects and expand three existing
developments in Metro Manila, which will allow to introduce 13,000 units this
year, almost double the 7,000 units in 2012.
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