THE sale of South Road Properties (SRP) lots through a Swiss Challenge has been approved by the Commission on Audit (COA), Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said yesterday.

Osmeña, meanwhile, called a Capitol official’s warning to SM Prime Holdings Inc. on the SRP a “veiled threat.”

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In his news conference yesterday, Osmeña asked why Capitol insists that the City needs an authority from Congress to dispose of SRP lots when the Provincial Government also did not ask for authority to buy land that is underwater.

“It’s a veiled threat, anyone can see through that... Imagine, you need a congressional approval for the SRP lots sale, but to buy lot underwater, you don’t need approval from Congress? But even with congressional approval, you can’t buy a lot that’s underwater,” he said.

Last Thursday, Capitol spokesperson Rory Jon Sepulveda said SM Prime should study the City’s Joint Venture Ordinance before it buys the 30-hectare portion of the SRP for P2.7 billion, to make sure they don’t commit any violation of the law.

In response, Sepulveda said, “He can call it whatever he wants but for us, it is nothing but an unsolicited advice to an unsolicited offer.”

Rules

Osmeña said the sale of SRP lots should not be subject to the rules of a joint venture, similar to the agreement that the City Government entered into with Filinvest Land Inc. (FLI).

The bidding for the sale and joint venture components of the FLI transaction were done through a Swiss Challenge.

But yesterday, Osmeña said COA approved the sale of SRP lots to FLI through a Swiss Challenge.

“In concept, we have the approval of COA to do the Swiss Challenge. Basically, we gave a copy of the proposal of Filinvest for a Swiss Challenge to COA and asked them if the procedure is okay and they said it’s okay. So if the procedure for Filinvest is okay, so what’s the reason it can’t be okay for SM?” he said.

In an interview yesterday, lawyer Nilo Pala, chief of the COA 7 legal department, declined to comment on the sale of SRP lots through a Swiss Challenge. He said he did not want to preempt any review by COA of City Hall transactions on the sale of SRP lots.

“We will just comment on that if there is a claim filed before our office,” he said.

As for the issue on the need for congressional authority to sell the 290-hectare SRP, Osmeña pointed out that the authority was not needed for the sale of the North Reclamation Area lot to SM.

He said that the sale of reclaimed lots in other parts of the country also did not have congressional authority.

“Technically speaking, the SRP might be the only reclamation project that’s approved by Congress because it’s part of a bilateral agreement between the Philippine and Japanese Government, and that’s been approved by Congress,” Osmeña said.