DOF plans to sell 6.2-hectare Mile Long property next year
The Department of Finance (DOF) plans to sell a stateproperty in Makati which had been leased by the government to the Prieto and Rufino families.
Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said the government will unload the 6.2-hectare Mile Long property by the middle of the next year following the order of President Rodrigo R. Duterte to sell this asset.
“Mile Long that is the new asset that we received which we should be privatizing by the middle of next year,” Dominguez told reporters in a recent interview at the DOF headquarters.
Dominguez, however, said the government has yet to come up with Mile Long’s valuation, noting they intend to get three price assessments of the property coming from two external assessors and DOF’s own valuation.
“Then of course there are several ways to do it and then we have to evaluate right. do we sell it as one chunk or separate chunks. I don’t really know yet what is the optimum for the government,” the finance chief said.
Last month, President Duterte said that once tenants vacate the Mile Long property, he intends to sell this government asset which had been occupied by Sunvar Realty Development Corp., owned by the Prieto and Rufino families.
The President plans to use the proceeds of the property sale to build more houses for government troops.
Sunvar Realty earlier said it would vacate the Mile Long property upon the order of a local court. Authorities earlier accused the company of squatting on government property and owing the government R1.6-billion exclusive of interest. The President, in his remarks last month, said the company must “pay your taxes and return all the properties to the people.” Earlier, Duterte accused the company of illegally occupying the government property without due payment to the government. The company took over the property in February, 1982 on a lease agreement that expired in 2002. Sunvar insisted it had paid R16.8 million in advanced rentals to develop the property, knowing the lease would expire in 2027.