Roxas Group sells property to NGCP

MANILA, Philippines — The Roxas Group has sold portions of its properties in Batangas to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) for close to P50 million to put up a new transmission line that will serve the town of Nasugbu.

Roxas and Co. Inc. (RCI) and Roxaco Land Inc. (RLC), sold a total 27,680 square meters (sqm) of land to NGCP for its Tuy (Calaca)-Dasmariñas 50-kilovolt (kV) Transmission Line Project.

In December last year, the RCI board approved the sale of over 27,000 square meters of its property in Banilad, Batangas to the NGCP.

NGCP is a Filipino-led, privately owned company in charge of operating, maintaining, and developing the country’s power grid, led by majority shareholders and vice chairman of the board Henry Sy Jr. and co-vice chairman Robert Coyiuto Jr.

The sale involves RCI’s property with an area of 15,577 sqm and RLC’s land with an area of 12,103 sqm.

RCI said the properties were sold for a total of P49.82 million, VAT exclusive.

The sale was made to trim the group’s interest cost and to improve debt-to-equity ratio.

Meanwhile, NGCP will use the land to put up part of the Tuy (Calaca)-Dasmariñas 500 kV Transmission Line Project, which straddles the provinces of Cavite and Batangas.

“The project of NGCP will allow NGCP to be more efficient in providing the growing town of Nasugbu with power directly from the power generator source located in Calaca, Batangas. It will be adjacent to properties of the corporation identified as a site for a future solar project,” RCI said.

In 2015, RCI bagged a service contract from the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a 50-MW solar project in the province of Batangas.

The solar project, estimated to cost P1.7 billion, was supposed to be developed by RCI subsidiary

Roxas Green Energy Corp. which joined the race for the feed-in-tariff (FIT) scheme in 2016.

FIT is a set of incentives given to power developers to invest in the renewable energy sector.

Under the FIT mechanism, the DOE has put in place an allocation target of 250 MW and a FIT rate of P6.63 per kilowatt hour (kwh) for solar projects completed by March 2016.

However, the company decided to delay the project development to focus on reorganization and increasing efficiencies in its existing businesses.