BCDA plan to develop, lease out idle assets seen to generate P40B

State-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) expects Malacañang to approve within the month its asset disposition program, which will allow it to generate about P40 billion.

At the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank’s 45th annual meeting on Wednesday, BCDA president and chief executive officer Arnel Paciano D. Casanova said the plan the agency had submitted to President Aquino contained a list of all the assets that BCDA hoped to develop through partnership with private companies, including the Bonifacio South, and idle land within economic zones that it intended to lease out.

“In Fort Bonifacio, we are hoping to dispose pieces of property worth about P35 billion to P40 billion, the biggest of which is the 33.1-hectare Bonifacio South property,” Casanova said.

SM Land Inc. was the only company that had submitted a proposal for the development of Bonifacio South, which was composed of parcels of land currently occupied by the Army Support Command and Special Services Unit of the Philippine Army, and the Bonifacio Naval Station and Philippine Marine Corps of the Philippine Navy.

“It is one of those issues we submitted to him. Whether we will conduct a Swiss Challenge or not would be up to the President because the overarching principle is that the government must receive the best value for the land,” Casanova said.

“The general policy really is we hold competitive bidding, because the assumption is that the interplay of market forces would create the best value for the property. As I said, those are the issues contained in the program submitted to the president,” he added.

Casanova further disclosed that BCDA had been evaluating its current asset privatization methods and looking at other strategic options such as “landbanking” and leasing of prime lots, considering that Fort Bonifacio is now almost fully developed.

The BCDA chief is bullish that the agency will be able to dispose some of the government’s remaining assets this year. Last year, the agency was not able to privatize any of the assets under its control.

Casanova said BCDA hoped to dispose of major assets this year given the high investor sentiment and the bullishness of the market.