Aboitiz Group bullish on business growth

MANILA, Philippines - Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. (AEV) expects its business to continue to grow under the administration of President Duterte despite an expected crackdown against coal-fired power plants.

“We’re very positive with the current administration. You can see the optimism in the air. I think so far, it’s been very encouraging. They really want to get things done as soon as possible,” said Erramon Aboitiz, president and CEO of AEV.

Aboitiz said the conglomerate would also continue to participate in countryside development.

“As far as countryside development is concerned, our businesses are really there. We rely on a lot of rural development and we deal with rural people for food and our feed business. And even our power business, we’re in Davao, we’re in Cotabato, we’re in less urban places,” Aboitiz said.

Asked about prospects for the company’s power business with staunch environmentalist Gina Lopez at the helm of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Aboitiz said they would continue to discuss the issue with the new administration.

 “This is something we have to deal with. Perhaps hopefully, we can show that the coal of today is much different than the coal of tomorrow. We have modern technologies and we have modern practices. if you go to our Davao plant, you don’t see smoke.

The realization is that coal of today is not anymore the coal of the past. While it is still not cheap, we cannot totally rely on renewables. It’s expensive. I believe that we should try to combine the different technologies and by doing that achieve some sort of a balance and together it possibly might work. I don’t think we can say that the thing of tomorrow is not going to be coal,” Aboitiz said.

He said the bigger worry for the government and industry is how to sustain power supply on the back of a growing economy.