April 7, 2014 9:56 pm by Madelaine B.
Miraflor [ manilatimes.net ]
AYALA Land Inc. (ALI) plans to build
over the next five years a major commercial, hotel and residential complex on a
74-hectare plot of land at the Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) complex in Taguig city
at a cost of about P80 billion.
Aniceto Bisnar, ALI vice president for
strategic planning management group, said the company will build hotels, office
buildings and residential projects using 480,000 square meters of developable
premises on the site. The government sold 74 hectares, out of 120 hectares at
the FTI complex, to ALI in November 2012 for P24.3 billion.
ALI will name the project Arca South.
Newly-elected ALI president and chief
executive officer Bobby Dy said the company plans to build more mixed-use
integrated estates in the country.
“Basically, we’ve laid out plans over
the next few years. This is very similar to what we have been doing. We want to
continue to expand our mixed-use developments. We want to make sure we keep on
introducing our market-leading mixed use integrated estates in these all-growth
centers. We also plan to offer more and more affordable products,” he said.
He added that ALI is formulating a new
five-year development plan after achieving previous targets.
“We are currently looking at a
five-year plan which is not finished yet in terms of our own timeline. What
we’ll do over the next quarters is what our plan will be over the next five
years,” he said.
Dy, previously ALI’s chief operating
officer, recently succeeded Antonino Aquino, who served the Ayala Group for
more than 30 years.
International venture
Dy said ALI is now trying to forge
joint venture agreements with prospective local partners in Myanmar and
Vietnam.
“We’re still in the process of
negotiating on an actual joint venture agreement in Vietnam. In Myanmar, we are
now doing due diligence,” he said.
“[These partnerships are] primarily
residential for now, or maybe a little bit of retail. Once we signed
agreements, we want to move quickly and get things done over the next 12 to 18
months,” he added.
He said ALI is working with its
Myanmar joint venture retail partner for a possible launch towards the end of
year of their first project, which may require an investment of about $30
million.
“Of the $30 million investment cost,
our share is $10 million, not a huge investment on our part. We don’t expect to
have a lot of capital allocation to international investments. About 90 percent
of our capital expenditures this year is still for domestic expansion,” Dy
said.
The company is set to issue this year
bonds worth about P15 billion. The proposed bond issues, which will be in
several tranches, will have a maturity of 11 years.
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