Philippines Gets $561.7M Bid For 600MW Masinloc Plant -2-
Friday, December 03, 2004
MANILA (Dow Jones)--The Philippine government has secured a bid of $561.7 million for the 600-megawatt Masinloc coal-fired power plant, Energy Secretary Vincent Perez said Wednesday.
"This is certainly a high point in our privatization efforts," said Perez in a statement. "The level of interest in Masinloc was matched by the respectable bid offers for the plant," he added.
Perez said YNN Pacific Consortium Inc. submitted the highest bid of $561.7 million for the plant, the biggest of the electricity generating assets of state utility National Power Corp. (NAP.YY) put up for auction this year.
YNN is a group of Philippine and Australian companies, led by Greater Pacific Financial Group of Australia, the energy department said.
Around 10 foreign and local groups initially expressed interest in bidding for Masinloc. But after two prior bidding postponements, only YNN and First Generation Holdings Corp. actually submitted bids Wednesday.
Perez said Masinloc was sold as a merchant plant, which means it doesn't include a guaranteed contract to supply electricity to Napocor.
"The successful bidding, despite the absence of an electricity supply contract, only emphasizes the investor interest in Masinloc," he said.
Masinloc is the sixth power plant that the Power Sector Assets & Liabilities Management Corp., or Psalm, the agency tasked to privatize Napocor, has sold this year. Psalm has so far raised $5.2 million from the sale of five small Napocor power plants.
Psalm plans to sell 27 Napocor power plants, with a total rated capacity of 5,800 megawatts.
Along with Napocor's power transmission assets, the government expects to raise around $5 billion from the privatization of Napocor. The transmission assets, which were spun off to the National Transmission Corp. in 2002, will be leased.
Proceeds from the sale of Napocor assets will be used to pay its debts that now stand at PHP300 billion after the government's decision to absorb PHP200 billion of the state utility's debt.
posted by philpower @ 10:42 AM,
