Asset sale lined up to shore up COVID funds

The Privatization and Management Office (PMO) will sell several pieces of property to help raise additional funds for the government’s COVID-19 response.

Chief Privatization Officer Gerard L. Chan told the Inquirer last week that the interagency Privatization Council had green-lit the sale of the following assets: 20 properties in the provinces of Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija and Pampanga, which used to be owned by the shuttered Technology Resource Center; one lot in Koronadal City, via government-to-government sale to Southern Philippines Development Authority, and 138 parcels of land in Antipolo City transferred from Philippine Knitting Mills Inc.

Chan said the Antipolo lots would be first offered to the city government before these would be sold as a bundled package.

The planned bidding for these assets had been suspended due to the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) imposed in Luzon and other parts of the country to contain the spread of COVID-19 since mid-March, Chan said.

Chan said the Department of Finance-attached PMO was currently “planning on how we are going to implement the disposition—no timeline as of yet since we just started to do skeletal work arrangement after lifting of ECQ.”

The PMO had yet to determine the floor price for each property.

As mandated, proceeds from the sale of these assets would be remitted by the PMO to the Bureau of the Treasury, Chan said.

As of end-April, the PMO remitted to the Treasury P266.7 million, including P182 million in cash dividends from Semirara Mining Corp., Chan disclosed.

During the month of March, the PMO had zero remittances—usually sourced from sales, lease rental, interest income and other earnings such as dividends from shares in corporations. Chan explained that the usual remittance process got delayed by the implementation of ECQ, during which physical distancing was strictly enforced. —Ben O. de Vera