MPTC bullish on parking venture

MANILA, Philippines — Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC) is betting big on the parking business, with plans to bolster its portfolio of managed parking space.

MPTC has ventured into the car parking business through a parking solutions subsidiary called Dibz.

Plans are underway for the expansion of the business, according to Dibz assistant vice president of operations and marketing Donald Saurombe.

“Our number of slots in our parking management, we have over a thousand active slots right now and by the end of next year we’re looking to bring that up to 10,000 slots. That’s what we have on the pipeline,” Saurombe said.

Dibz is a smart parking services group that offers pre-booked parking, valet services, and parking management, among others.

“Currently, because of the pandemic, we have halted our service for the pre-booked parking. We want to bring it back next year once people are back to working in the office and also bring it back at a much larger scale,” Saurombe said.

“We’ll bring it back much larger next year so that it will be available in all major cities, the central business districts like BGC, Makati, Ortigas, Pasay, the Newport area and more,” he said.

Saurombe said Dibz aims to revolutionize the parking industry and elevate the parking experience of motorists.

“We’ve built a mobile application that allows drivers to search for, reserve, and be guaranteed a parking space, thereby we’re taking away the hassle that they have to usually experience when they park traditionally,” he said.

Dibz is one of seven subsidiaries offering digitally driven solutions that was introduced by MPTC last week as part of its new business unit called MPT Mobility Inc.

MPTC president Rodrigo Franco said the establishment of MPT Mobility would play a key role in the sustainability of the business as it would serve as the primary organization in MPTC’s pursuit of new revenue streams.

Traffic across MPTC’s domestic tollways has already been improving with the easing of quarantine restrictions, enabling the mobility of motorists.

In the first half, MPTC revenues grew by 36 percent year-on-year to P8.3 billion, while core income surged 105 percent year-on-year to P1.9 billion.

MPTC is the tollways arm of conglomerate Metro Pacific Investments Corp.