PSALM plans to bid out 8 lots to pay for some Napocor debts

By Lenie Lectura – October 25, 2018
from Business Mirror

THE Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) will bid out eight lots, with a total of 20,975 square meters (sq m), as part of its efforts to generate more funds to pay off obligations incurred by the National Power Corp. (Napocor).

The eight lots comprised the former location of the Manila Thermal Power Plant in Paco, Manila.

The state firm has set a minimum bid price of P736.368 million for the sale of the assets. Bids received reflecting a bid price below the minimum price will be rejected.

PSALM has set a pre-bid conference on November 5, with bid submission deadline set on November 23.

“The sale is on an ‘as is, where is’ basis. Bidding is open to Filipino individuals and sole proprietorships, as well as corporations, partnerships and at least 60-percent Filipino owned, joint ventures or consortiums, government corporate entities and local government units,” PSALM said.

PSALM has real-estate assets with an aggregate land area of 100,438,788 sq m, consisting of 6,150 lots located in various parts of the country. Around 60 percent of the total land area is located in Luzon, 39 percent in Mindanao and the remaining 1 percent in the Visayas.

PSALM earlier raised plans to covert some of its real-estate assets into economic zones.

PSALM and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) earlier inked a memorandum of understanding.

PSALM provided a list of assets to Peza for consideration in its initial phase of suitability assessment. Converting some of PSALM’s real-estate assets into economic zones is an important privatization undertaking. Leasing out its land properties will provide it with a long-term opportunity to generate sustainable revenue while the government remains the property owner.

As of the end of June, PSALM’s remaining principal debt stood at P246.73 billion, while the remaining obligations under its independent power-producer contracts amounted to P202.7 billion.

PSALM successfully reduced its financial obligations by 64 percent to P449.4 billion.  It is the agency mandated by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 to handle the sale of the remaining state-power assets and the financial obligations of Napocor.

Since then, PSALM has already generated privatization proceeds from assets amounting to P918.5 billion. Of this amount, PSALM had already collected P545.2 billion, while the balance is based on a payment schedule.