After Tommy Osmena's successful return to City Hall in 2002, he once again oversaw the development of the South Reclamation Project which, by then, had drawn a lot of criticism. With the loan ballooning due to the Asian Financial Crisis, Osmeña's critics in the media accused the city government of sacrificing basic services for debt servicing.
Long after the SRP was finished in 2006, it remained empty for years until it made its major breakthrough with an outright sale and a joint venture deal made with the Filinvest Group of Andrew Gotianun, Sr., descendants of Pedro Gotiaoco's brother Goquiaoco. FilInvest Land, Inc. made a P348 Million down payment on March 9, 2009. This was followed by another deal closed with Henry Sy's Shoemart in 2009 amounting to some P3 Billion payable every quarter until 2016.
The original plan for the SRP was to make it a light industrial park. It is accredited with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) as a Special Economic Zone. Alvin Garcia said the Japanese government would not have funded it if the present development was the one presented.
But he also acknowledged that the rise of China as a world manufacturing giant made the plan untenable as several years after the SRP was completed in 2006, there were still no locators prompting the city government to change their strategy and turn it into a mixed-land use facility.
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