BCDA asset sale on hold until next administration

MANILA, Philippines – New land assets to be disposed by the state-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) would have to wait until after the coming elections, with a 47-hectare property at Bonifacio Global City in Taguig seen as the first in line on the auction block.

In an interview BCDA president and chief executive officer Arnel Paciano Casanova said BCDA is done disposing assets until President Aquino steps down from office in June.

“Our instruction was to wait for the next administration. We are quite sensitive also on having deals as big as this on an election period. So for now for disposition, we don’t have plans. We will probably have after the elections, when the new administration comes. It could be within the year also but we have to seek the direction of the new leadership,” Casanova said.

Casanova said a disputed property situated inside the former Fort Andres Bonifacio Military Reservation in Taguig is likely the first land asset to be auctioned by BCDA under the incoming administration.

Ownership of the 47-hectare property was earlier claimed by a group of retired military officers called the Navy Officers’ Village Association Inc. (Novai).

BCDA in October last year said the Supreme Court decided to uphold an earlier decision made by the Court of Appeals to cancel ownership of the Novai on the Taguig estate, thereby allowing the agency to pursue its development plans for the property.

“Part of institutionalizing governance in BCDA is also to time it properly. We believe that this would appreciate more later or after the 2016 presidential elections. We believe that the Novai property could be at that time mature already for disposition. We will be having a masterplan of that portion,” Casanova said.

BCDA reported that the 475,009 square-meter parcel of land is now estimated to be worth more than P47 billion based on the current selling price of about P100,000 per square meter.