Pagbilao finance deal bags award

The P33.31-billion, 15-year project finance facility of Pagbilao Energy Corp. (PEC) for the expansion of the 735-megawatt (MW) Pagbilao coal-fired power plant in Quezon province has clinched the “Best Power Deal” award in the Triple A Asia Infrastructure Awards 2015 of the Hong Kong-based finance publication “The Asset.” This was the project’s fourth award over the past year.

First Metro Investment Corp., the investment banking arm of the Metrobank group, acted as one of the mandated lead arrangers of the finance facility together with BDO Capital and Investment Corp. and BPI Capital Corp.

The proceeds of the facility are being used to finance the construction and development of a third coal-fired unit with a net capacity of 400 MW within the site of the existing power station. The project, which is jointly developed by Aboitiz Power and Japanese-led Team Energy Corp., is expected to shore up power supply in Luzon by 2017.

The PEC deal is so far the single-biggest peso-denominated project finance transaction in the local market. It was participated in by a syndicate of seven lenders, all of which were domestic banks, First Metro said.

“This deal shows that big-ticket infrastructure projects can now be financed locally,” First Metro president Roberto Juanchito Dispo said in a statement.

Dispo said that in the past, financing big projects would normally require the presence of and support from foreign banks or multilateral agencies.

The continuous growth of the Philippine domestic market and improvement of the country’s banking system have enabled local banks to back projects of this magnitude, fully in peso-denominated currency, he said.

Last April, the deal was conferred the “Asia Financing Transaction of the Year 2014” by Infrastructure Investor, an international magazine and online news service provider that covers infrastructure finance and investment.

In March 2015, the same deal was recognized as the “Infrastructure and Project Finance Deal of the Year in Asia Pacific” by The Banker Magazine, a premier banking and finance resource based in London.

In December 2014, it was named “Best Project Finance Deal in Southeast Asia” by Alpha Southeast Asia, a monthly institutional investment magazine.