WHETHER politically-motivated or not, it still raises some eyebrows. After all, it’s not every day that you encounter land being sold so cheap. Here. In the metro.
So what if the transaction happened three years ago? Or that the matter had already been raised last January prior to the barangay elections?
It doesn’t change the fact that the Mandaue City Government, under the administration of former mayor Jonas Cortes, sold a 3.5-hectare government property to the Ouano Development & Management Corp. (Ecodemcor) for P50 per square hectare.
Yup.
Ecodemcor bought 3.5 hectares of land in a highly urbanized city for just P1,791,050.
Cortes, who is now the sixth district representative, released a statement defending the deal.
According to him, the price was based on the valuation of foreshore land under Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Administrative Order (AO) 99-34, or Rules and Regulations Governing the Administration, Management and Development of Foreshore Areas, Marshy Lands and Other Lands Bordering Bodies of Water.
I checked out AO 99-34.
Under Section 20, or Expiration of Contracts, “upon final expiration of the lease, or of any extension of the same or cancellation thereof, all buildings and other permanent improvements made by the lessee, his heirs, executors, administrators, successors or assigns shall accrue to the DENR and the NRDC may be allowed to manage and administer said properties in accordance with law.”
I’m not a lawyer, but nowhere in AO 99-34 does it say that the 3.5-hectare property in Barangay Looc should be valued at P50 per square meter. There was even no mention of selling the land, just the process of leasing it.
So how come Cortes’s camp is using AO 99-34 to justify selling the property at P50 per square meter?
His staff, Atty. Joel Seno, pointed out that when Ecodemcor first leased the land, it was submerged in water.
The company, he said, spent P75 million to reclaim. It also donated some P42 million worth of roads to the city. That adds up to P117 million.
Of course, he didn’t say how much Ecodemcor earned all those years while it leased the property. It must have made some money otherwise the company wouldn’t have bought it. So it wasn’t like the City Government owed the company something.
The city assessor said that the appraised value of the property in 2015 was P4,580 per square meter. Last year, the property was valued at P5,000 per square meter.
Had the City sold it using the 2017 value, it would have made P179,705,000. But it didn’t. So it ended up getting P1,791,050.
Hence, the raised eyebrows.