Bid deadline set for Manila Thermal Power site

STATE-LED Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) has given interested buyers until Nov. 23 to submit their bids for the site of the decommissioned Manila Thermal Power Plant used to stand.

In an advertisement published on Wednesday, PSALM has issued an invitation to interested parties to the land with an indicative area of 20,975 square meters in Paco, Manila at a minimum bid price of P736.368 million.

The land, which the agency is selling through eight lots, used to host a power plant that supplied electricity to the Luzon grid. The facility was decommissioned in 2000 and privatized in 2009.

PSALM has set the schedule of bidding activities, including the due diligence on Oct. 22 to Nov. 21, and the pre-bid conference on Nov. 5. The agency previously auctioned the property but ended up without any interested bidders.

In August, PSALM President and Chief Executive Irene Joy B. Garcia said a “road map” for a second round of bidding was being finalized after declaring the public auction a failure when no bids were received as of noon on Aug. 15, 2018.

She had said PSALM would look into the reasons why the four bidders, who initially purchased bid documents, decided to eventually not participate in the bidding.

When the power plant was privatized in 2009, largely for the remaining value of the structure, the proceeds were used to liquidate maturing power sector debts.

The privatization paved the way for a complete clean up of the land where the plant used to sit, ahead of the site’s disposal.

PSALM said the property has a potential commercial value because of its proximity to Manila’s business district.

It said the proceeds from the sale of the underlying land would help augment the agency’s funding sources for the management of its assumed liabilities.

PSALM was created under Republic Act No. 9136, the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) of 2001, the law that restructured the Philippine power sector. It took over the ownership of all existing government-owned power generation assets. Its principal purpose is to manage the orderly sale and privatization of these assets. —