By Alena Mae S. Flores | Dec. 21, 2014
at 11:35pm [ manilastandardtoday.com ]
Power Sector Assets and Liabilities
Management Corp., the agency in charge of privatizing the government’s energy
assets, plans to sell or lease 10,000 hectares of properties starting next
year.
PSALM president and chief executive
Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. said in a statement state-run National Power Corp. had
100,438,788 square meters or 10,438 hectares of disposable land in its
portfolio, which he said could further reduce the government’s energy sector
debt.
He said PSALM aimed to start the
privatization program for the real estate assets in 2015 after a board
approval.
“The plan hopes to aid in the further
reduction of PSALM’s residual debt, as well as help in the government’s energy
security thrust and facilitate local and national development by identifying
possible sites for future power facilities and/or new economic ventures,”
Ledesma said.
He said Republic Act No. 9136, or the
Electric Power Industry Reform Act, mandated PSALM to ensure the orderly
privatization of government’s power and related disposable assets.
“Aside from the transmission business,
power assets and independent power producer contracts which, for the past
years, have been the focus of PSALM’s privatization activities, the real estate
assets of PSALM are likewise a potential source of revenue for the liquidation
of its financial obligations,” he said.
The project, “Strategic Plan for
PSALM’s Real Estate Assets: Towards Debt Liquidation, Energy Security and
Development,” categorizes PSALM’s various land and land holdings and provides
possible approaches to maximizing their potentials, either through
privatization or asset management.
Among the legally-feasible modes
identified in the plan are through outright sale, lease and operation and
management/maintenance by another person or entity.
The plan proposes to privatize real
estate assets in the sites of decommissioned power plants, lands not related to
power generation, lands under land lease agreements, which were previously
offered for sale to new power plant owners or successor generating companies
but remain unsold, lands adjacent to or near privatized power plants or IPP
plants and lands adjacent to or near the remaining power plants and IPP plants of
PSALM.
Ledesma, however, said inalienable
lands would be excluded from the privatization program.
PSALM’s real estate assets consisted
of 6,414 lots with an aggregate area of 102 million square meters, but the
agency already sold nearly 2 million sq. m. to successor generating companies.
It still had 6,160 lots covering 100,438,788 sq. m.
These included alienable and
disposable (5,991 lots with a total area of 74,878,955 sq. m); inalienable (107
lots with a total area of 22,367,145 sq. m); and lands with ongoing titling
documentation (62 lots with a total area of 3,192,687 sq. m).
About 60 percent (4,771 lots with a
total area of 59,821,616 sqm) of the real estate assets are located in Luzon,
39 percent (1,284 lots with a total area of 39,260,003 sqm) in Mindanao and 39
percent (105 lots with a total area of 1,357,169 sqm) in the Visayas.
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