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Friday, April 14, 2006
SRP locator to give P500M downpayment
By Aurelia l. Castro
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
A SINGAPOREAN firm is Cebu City’s biggest potential “pre-approved” locator in the South Reclamation Project (SRP), an official of the Cebu Investments Promotion Center (CIPC) said yesterday.
“This firm wants to put up a highly-automated manufacturing plant and wants to buy 20 hectares. We are really dreaming of this because if it does (locate), then we won’t have to worry about our loan for the next five years,” CIPC managing director Joel Mari Yu told Sun.Star Cebu in an interview.
CIPC is the designated marketing arm of the SRP.
He said Singapore’s Fil-Rich Holdings Corp. will put up the “world’s first” fully automated container manufacturing plant here in Cebu.
“We quoted Fil-Rich Holdings Corp. a price of P2 billion or P10,000 per square meter, and they agreed. All negotiations were done already. We expect to receive their down payment of P500 million after the Holy Week,” he said.
With the purchase of a 20-hectare land at SRP for P2 billion, he said Cebu City government could pay “more than one-third” of its loan from Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
He noted that Fil-Rich Holdings Corp. does not meet SRP’s requirement of 350 to 400 workers for every hectare. However, because it’s a highly strategic firm buying 20 hectares for P2 billion, the land purchase is a “dream” they have sought for, he said.
Fully accredited
He explained that CIPC uses the standard for export processing zones, where potential locators need to hire 350 to 400 persons per hectare. However, it’s not absolute, he added.
Cardiovascular Hospitals of America also wants to put up the first hospital in the Philippines that will be fully accredited by American hospitals insurance system at the SRP.
“There’s no hospital yet in the Philippines, including St. Luke’s or Makati Medical Center, that is accredited by the American insurance system. This will be the first,” he said.
The hospital will require two hectares of land, he said.
In a forum last month, David Paraiso, chairman and director of the Health-care Coalition Institute of Santa Fe Springs, California said aging populations of developed states present tremendous opportunities for countries that can provide retirement homes and medical services to retirees.
Yu stressed that for the country to capture the foreign market of retirees, it has to do some “realigning” of its health insurance system to ensure that Philippine doctors and hospitals can accept the insurance companies and policies of the retirees.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 13, 2006 issue)
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