After announcing a nonexistent company planning to build one of the largest economic zones in the country to date, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) clarified that it had indeed prequalified a firm registered under the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) but with a different name.
Peza Deputy Director General Tereso Panga said the real name of the company registered was First Pangasinan Property Development Corp. (FPPDC), not First Pangasinan Industrial Corp. (FPIC) as mentioned in Peza’s earlier announcement.
The blunder comes amid the controversy surrounding the alleged Taiwanese economic fugitive Chen You-hao, which Peza previously said was an affiliate of FPIC.
Earlier, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines (Teco) has urged the government not to accept the investment proposals of Chen, saying he had been wanted in Taiwan since 2014.
Responding to this, Peza said that it was doing due diligence given the weight of the accusations thrown at Chen.
Nevertheless, Peza announced in a briefing on Aug. 29 that they had cleared for prequalification FPIC’s project proposal, which involved a 30-year development of a 3,000-hectare mixed-use economic zone in Dasol, Pangasinan, costing $360 billion or some P18 trillion.
Peza Director General Charito Plaza said FPIC was SEC-registered and it was 60 percent Filipino owned with the remaining share held by foreign nationals.
However, SEC commission secretary Arman Pan told the Inquirer that the company was not registered in the SEC.
“The correct company name is First Pangasinan Property Development Corp., the same proponent that submitted its application with Peza. We got a copy of its SEC papers and other required documents for submission to the board,” Panga told the Inquirer in a text message.
Upon checking with the SEC, there is indeed a company named First Pangasinan Property Development Corp. It was registered on July 13, 2017.
“Rest assured that we exercise due diligence and require full compliance with all the set requirements on all our ecozone developer/locator applicants including FPPDC as our standard operating procedure in Peza,” he added.
According to Panga, the wrong company name was due to a “typographical error.”
Being prequalified, this means the company’s project had “qualified for registration with entitlement to incentives, subject to compliance with all the requirements for Presidential Proclamation,” Peza said in a statement.