Osmeña to Reopen Coastal Road in December (Sept 2006)

By Doris C. Bongcac
Cebu Daily News
Last updated 11:10am (Mla time) 09/05/2006

Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña will fully open the Cebu South Coastal Road to traffic during the holiday season to make the South Road Properties (SRP), formerly South Reclamation Project, more appealing to investors...

“We have to re-shift our strategy to create a situation by Christmas that a lot of people will go to the SRP. This will address one of the most important issues that buyers also ask about. Is it accessible? Is it desirable?,” he told reporters during a news conference on Monday.

The mayor said the move was to assure prospective investors that the SRP was accessible in order to disprove a report published in Cebu Daily News (CDN) that the lack of interior roads has been discouraging investors.

Osmeña was reacting to the statement of Joel Mari Yu, executive director of the Cebu Investment Promotions Center tasked to sell the SRP, who presented to CDN the real situation of the property that tied the city to a multi-billion peso loan up to 2025.

Yu had told CDN that most investors only wanted to lease the property on SRP but not buy lots. They also wanted to see interior roads branching out to the South Coastal Road as well as to fill up a crater of about eight hectares wide near the coastal road, which is already about one meter below sea level.

According to Yu, the city government had limited financial resources to build the roads and to fill up the gaping hole.

But Osmeña called the CDN report a “demolition job,” which made it harder for him to sell the SRP.

The mayor said he would open SRP by December but subject to some regulations to avoid vandals, which was the reason why he had closed down the Cebu South Coastal Road that leads to the 240-hectare reclaimed property.

But Osmeña was forced to reopen the coastal road up to 7 p.m. after he was ordered to do so by the court. Still, he required motorists to use a special SRP pass when using the access road in Barangay Mambaling.

Before he will open the road in December, Osmeña promised that facilities like water and power would be put in place.

While electric posts have been put up, these were not connected to the power distributor Visayan Electric Company. Water drawn in the vicinity of the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) building on Kawit Island was not potable, he said.

Osmeña said he was negotiating with Philinvest to open a restaurant on Kawit Island, as he wanted to bring in economic activity to the SRP to entice investors. The city government has been putting up a man-made white sand beach in a portion of Pond F near Kawit.

Still, he said he wanted to remain selective in the type of industries that would be put up on his centerpiece project. Top priority would be companies that would generate more employment.

He pointed that a businessman wanted to open a water park at the SRP, but he turned it down. He was not also inclined to open a mall in the SRP that would compete with the existing malls.

Osmeña said he would prefer to accommodate manufacturing companies like those found at the Mactan Export Processing Zone. Another acceptable investment is a hospital that will cater to Balikbayans, he said.

The city may also decide to sell a portion of the reclaimed lot for its loan re-payment in the absence of a funding source. “We can sell four to five hectares at P5,000 per square meter on a fire sale. That will take care of a year's loan amortization,” he said.

Osmeña said the city could sell properties located along the main road like those properties along the Mambaling Access Road and the vicinity of Pond F. Interior properties may be up for lease, he said.

Almost a quarter of the city's annual budget goes to repaying the loan of about 12.3 billion yen or about P6.3 billion from the Japan Bank of International Cooperation.

Cebu City Administrator Francisco “Bimbo” Fernandez, for his part, said the main reason that hindered the sale of SRP lots to foreign investors was the provision in the constitution that bans foreigners from completely owning property in the country.

Fernandez said foreigners needed local partners because the constitution only allows them to own 40 percent of a property in the country. Foreign investors who wanted to buy lots in the SRP were still looking for local partners, he added. /with report from Correspondent Jhunnex Napallacan