Government urged to defer FTI privatization for 10

Officials of the Food Terminal Inc. as well as local officials of the municipality of Taguig, Metro Manila are asking the Arroyo administration for a 10-year moratorium on the privatization of the Food Terminal Inc. to enable the once viable agricultural trading project to attract more investors in the 120-hectare complex and help the administration realize its vision of providing affordable food to the teeming population of Metro Manila.

"We would like the Arroyo administration to have a firm declaration on the FTI because any pronouncements of another privatization move will surely scare away potential investors like what happened in 1997 and 1998," said Benjamin Angeles, FTI vice president for marketing and business development.

Angeles said he, along with the local officials of Taguig and other concerned parties like farmers organizations, are vigorously working for the removal of FTI from the "hit list" of the Asset Privatization Trust.

In a press conference, Angeles presented local officials of the municipality of Taguig led by external affairs director Art Clavo, who said he is meeting with the municipal board to ensure the passage of a board resolution that will be submitted to the FTI governing board meeting on Sept. 6, 2001.

"It is not the time to sell FTI because the economy is down and nobody will buy anything at a high price these days," Angeles said, adding it would be wiser for the government to turn it around and make it more productive and viable while at the same time making it a venue for government to fulfill its promise of delivering affordable but stable supply of food to its people, at all times.

Founded in 1968 as the Greater Manila Terminal Food Market Inc., it was registered on May 3, 1968 with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a private corporation. The National Government reserved 120 hectares of the Fort Bonifacio property under a 50-year lease contract.

Unless the future of FTI is ascertained, no amount of good plans can be implemented with much success because investors will continue to shy away from FTI, Angeles said.

On March 27, 1974 FTI was adopted as the new corporate name. Letter of Instruction No. 1013 of President Marcos directed the National Food Authority, an agency under the Department of Agriculture, to create a linkage agreement with the company and assist FTI’s marketing and procurement operations. It also classified FTI as a government-owned and controlled corporation.

Prior to the closing of its food trading operations, FTI never operated as a profit-oriented enterprise. Its food trading and distribution activities were geared primarily to assist farmers, food producers and wholesalers, exporters and industrial users. The basic food and non-food items were sold in the Kadiwa center at prices five to 20 percent lower than prevailing market.

FTI entered into medium to long-term leases for its prime industrial and commercial spaces where buildings with standard-sized stalls for officers or small scale processing operations were set up on short to medium term leases. There were also 16 cold an dry storage facilities in the central refrigeration warehouse (CRW). The CRW dropped to below 40 percent in capacity utilization in recent years but is now recovering slowly, he added.

For July 2001, the capacity utilization of the CRW is as follows: dairy products, seven percent; fruits and vegetables, 16 percent, non food items, three percent; meat, 22 percent; poultry, three percent and fish and marine, 49 percent. Total volume for those products was at 3,264.10 metric tons.

It now has close to 300 company locators with a total of 40,000 workers, some of which closed down when privatization reached its peak in 1998, which resulted in two failed biddings. It is now home to some of the nation’s top exporting companies and their volume of business accounts for the country’s export earnings of P11 billion a year.

Locators by industry groups as of July 31, 2001 are: sevices with 36 percent of leased spaces; food/food agriculture-related products, 15 percent; electronics, 15 percent; garments and textiles, 23 percent and others, 11 percent.

Angeles, who took over FTI’s helm only last Aug. 1, said he is now busy doing linkaging with local governments, the National Government agencies, farmers organizations and business groups prior to the implementation of the FTI city project, which converts the complex into a distribution hub for agricultural commodities produced all over the country.