Fujimi sale back to square one as bidders fail to meet requirements

MANILA, Philippines - The government is back to square one in its efforts to lease out its real estate property in Fujimi, Japan after the six interested parties failed to meet the respective requirements, a ranking Finance official said over the weekend.

“There were six bidders before but they were non-compliant on the requirements on the net worth,” Finance Undersecretary Estela Sales said.

With this setback, Sales conceded that the government’s target to lease out the property in the first quarter of the year would not be achieved.

The government hopes to bid out the 50-year lease and development contract for the property for P3 billion.

Revenues from the lease of the Fujimi property are included in the revised P30 billion privatization target of the government for this year, which is higher than the previous goal of P12.5 billion. This also includes the P13 billion from the sale of the government’s Food Terminals Inc. property inTaguig and the P12 billion from the sale of its 60-percent stake in Philippine National Oil Co.-Exploration Corp.

According to the government’s revised deadline, the signing of a service development agreement is scheduled on March 9 from Feb. 23 previously.

The actual submission of technical and financial bids by qualified bidders was supposed to be on Feb. 22. On March 9, the qualified bidder and the government were expected to sign the service development agreement.

However, after a review of the six parties, the government’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) for the Japan properties concluded that the six interested parties — mostly Japanese contractors — were not qualified.

Sales said the government has sought the help of the organizations of Japanese contractors to tap bigger companies that would meet the requirements set by the BAC.

The Finance official said the slowdown in the Japanese economy must have also contributed to difficulty in privatizing via long-term lease the Fujimi property.

“We wrote the Japanese contractors last week. We also have to get the inputs of the BAC as to where do we go from here since the six parties did not qualify,” Sales said.

Furthermore, she said the government may also ask local contractors to tie-up with Japanese companies in developing the property.

“There is no legal impediment to that. If the Filipino contractors are already conducting business there and they can always tie up with Japanese contractors,” she said.