Conglomerate San Miguel Corp. plans to participate in the new round of bidding for the 650-megawatt Malaya power plant, which will now include its property in Pililla, Rizal province.
San Miguel president Ramon Ang confirmed the company’s interest in the Malaya plant. “Yes, [we will participate],” Ang said, when asked whether the company would bid in the second round of privatization of the Malaya power project.
San Miguel is one of the country’s biggest power players with coal, natural gas and hydro power plants in its portfolio.
Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. is now soliciting the consulting services for the privatization of the Malaya plant with an approved budget of P8.6 million.
“For Malaya, it’s the plant and what we are trying to do for the privatization of Malaya is to include the land so it’s going to be bundled together,” PSALM president Irene Joy Besido-Garcia said.
Garcia said PSALM was prepared to return the payment of bidders who acquired the bid documents during the privatization process last year which was put on hold.
“We got a direction from the DoE [Department of Energy] to look into the possibility because in the past usually it’s just the power plant and there is a lease contract on the land. Now, we want to sell the power plant on an ‘as is, where is’ basis and then we will include the land so we can optimize the value of the power plant,” Garcia said.
“So what we plan to do is, there’s adjustment to the terms of reference. We really have to conduct a new bidding. To be fair to the those who already purchased bid documents, materials, we are actually going to credit them the amount that they paid already for the bidding materials to be fair,” she said.
The Malaya plant consists of a 300-MW unit with a once-through type boiler and a 350-MW unit fitted with a conventional boiler.
PSALM was supposed to bid out the facility in March 2017, but it was put on hold after the Energy Department decided to include in the bidding the option to convert the plant into liquefied natural gas.