The government plans to sell a portion of the Mile Long property in Makati City and redevelop the other portion, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said in a news briefing Thursday.
“I told the president already [that] I don’t plan to sell the whole thing. I’ll sell a portion of it. And I explained to him why. Once the development starts there, the prices will go up. So why shouldn’t we benefit from it anyway. We don’t need the cash,” Dominguez said.
Dominguez said he wanted to divide the controversial property into “three or four lots” and probably sell two lots and keep two lots.
“I just want to wait for the price to go up. Once the development starts there, prices will go up…,” he said.
Dominguez said the valuation procedures for the property would start next month and the government was on track to selling or privatizing it by the middle of 2018.
Dominguez said last year the government would privatize the controversial Mile Long property in Makati City as a part of efforts to raise more funds for development projects.
“Mile Long, that is the new asset that we received which we should be privatizing by the middle of next year,” Dominguez told reporters in a briefing in September.
Dominguez said the government’s plan was to speed up the privatization of more state assets, starting out with the “big ones” including the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. and Mile Long.
The Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 141 ordered Sunvar Realty Development Corp. in August 2017 to vacate the Mile Long property following the Aug. 14 resolution of the Court of Appeals. The order was served by Solicitor General Jose Calida and the court sheriff on Sunvar and other tenants of Mile Long.
The Mile Long property has been the subject of a long battle between the government and Sunvar, a company owned by the Rufino and Prieto families since the early 2000s
Dominguez also said the government would start privatizing this year the 17 casinos being operated by the state-owned Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.
He said the capacity, including the number of tables and visitors of each casino, should be known first to finally determine their real valuations.
He said the privatization of Pagcor casinos might take several years because the deals were quite “complex,” requiring a thorough study to see to it that it would be advantageous to the government.