By Lailany P. Gomez, Reporter

FACED with a fiscal blowout, the Department of Finance (DOF) is pushing through with the auction
of the Philippines’ Fujimi property in Japan despite opposition from a number of groups.

Finance Undersecretary Crisanta Legaspi said the Privatization Management Office (PMO) would auction off on December 3 the right to develop the remaining 4,360-square-meter Fujimi property under a five-year lease.

She said the DOF had qualified three of the nine pre-qualified bidders. The agency earlier was expecting 22 parties to submit bids.

“It’s not a sale. It’s a lease and it’s allowed under the law. If we were restrained by appropriate authorities on the basis of these allegations, probably we will have to stop,” Finance Undersecretary Estela Sales, who heads the DOF Revenue Operations Group, said, referring to the growing opposition to the Fujimi property privatization.

“But there are no such restraints whether from the executive or the judiciary, so we have to follow our mandate,” she said.

While the matter had been threshed out, the DOF is preparing a statement on the issue, she said. Those opposed to the disposition of the Fujimi property had said that the plan for the lot would lay to waste a historical landmark.

Sales admitted that the ambassador’s residence would be torn down to give way to a planned 21-story structure.

Members of Save Fujimi Property International Network, a group of Filipinos and Japanese in Tokyo, buck Manila’s plan to lease out its Fujimi property, saying that the Arroyo administration must “preserve the shared cultural and historical rights” of both nations.

Located in upscale Fujimi Cho, Chiyoda-Ku, the property serves as the official residence of Philippine ambassadors to Japan. In 1943, the Philippines bought the property, which has a 1952-dated marker from the Philippine National Historical Institute certifying that the structure was built during the Tokugawa Era.
Legaspi said the privatization would help the government raise revenues to finance vital projects.

The government expects to earn P3 billion to P6 billion from its privatization.

The government has managed to raise about P1 billion in revenues from its P30-billion privatization program this year. With barely two months before the end of the year, some groups have raised concerns about any midnight sale of state assets in so far as these items fail to command a premium among potential buyers.

The budget deficit at end-October had reached P266.1 billion, or P16.1 billion higher than the full-year program of P250 billion.

Finance Secretary Margarito Teves had said that the Supreme Court would give a favorable decision, clearing the sale of the government’s 24-percent stake in San Miguel Corp. (SMC).

He said the sale of the state’s interest in SMC alone would give the government a comfortable margin below the full-year deficit program. The SMC stake is seen to generate P50 billion.

Teves had said the worst-case scenario involved a deficit of P300 billion, while a likely scenario would yield a P280 billion funding shortfall.