Gov’t to proceed with UCPB stake sale after SC lifts TRO

THE SALE of the government’s stake in United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) will go ahead, following the Supreme Court’s lifting of a 2015 temporary restraining order (TRO), the Finance department said.

Asked whether government will proceed with the sale, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said in a forum on Thursday: “The TRO has been lifted. The capital program of UCPB is expiring on Dec. 31, 2018, and we are not inclined to have it.”

“The capital program says that by 2018 whether it will continue or it won’t, which is providing the income support for the bank. So the question is, I told them we are not planning to extend it, so that gives us our own internal deadline,” Mr. Dominguez said.

The bank needs to maintain a 10% capital adequacy ratio set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, higher than the Basel 3 international standard of 8%.

In an Aug. 8 decision, the Supreme Court lifted the June 2015 TRO it issued on Executive Orders 179 and 180 signed by former president Benigno S. C. Aquino III, which provides the administrative guidelines for the privatization of assets acquired using coconut levy funds that were collected from farmers during the government of the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

The Court said that the order “does not create a new special fund but merely reiterates that revenues arising out of or in connection with the privatization of coconut levy funds shall be deposited in the Special Accounts in the General Fund.”

Prior to the issuance of the TRO, the privatization plan involved both the government’s 73.9% stake in UCPB worth at least P1.1 billion — at 1,106,408,800 in common shares at a minimum price of P1 each — and recapitalization of at least P15 billion through subscription for up to 37.2 billion of primary common shares.

However, Mr. Dominguez said that there is still no valuation for the sale.—