Gwen finds SRP better to invest in, says Tomas

Cebu City Mayor-on-leave Tomas Osmeña expected Governor Gwendolyn Garcia to decide on investing in the SRP since the province is not “desirable.”

Osmeña, when sought for comment on the recent move of the Province of Cebu in showing their intention over the areas being eyed by the Filinvest Land Incorporation (FLI), said he will just have to wait and see.

“Of course, it is so bati to invest in the province she doesn’t like to live in the province, let’s see,” Osmeña said. Last December, Wednesday, Garcia had a representative to buy a set of eligibility documents from the Secretariat of the Joint Venture Selection Committee prior to the opening of bids on December 23.

Cebu City invited all interested private sector entities and participants to submit a competitive challenge over FLI’s unsolicited proposal over a 50.6-hectare lot at the SRP. FLI committed to compensate the City over a period of 20 years first with a minimum of a P1.5 billion cash payable in the next three years.

Meanwhile the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), funding agency of the SRP wrote a letter to acting mayor Michael Rama, clarifying that their representative did not mention the SRP plan as “unacceptable” during the recently-held workshop of the Asian Development Bank.

Norio Matsuda, chief representative of JICA Philippines, told Rama their representative in the said workshop, Jun Watanabe, did not make such a statement.

“Related to the workshop we were informed that one of the local newspapers in Cebu published the relevant article with a headline ‘Japanese government frowns on projects, planned SRP use not acceptable’. We would like to make it clear on this occasion that our representative on the workshop did not make such kind of statement during and after the workshop,” Matsuda said.

In the workshop, consultants from ADB were already asking for a masterplan which the city government was not able to produce since Osmeña wanted the SRP to be planned according to the demand. — Ferliza C. Contratista/BRP (THE FREEMAN)