MANDAUE City’s 25-year foreshore lease agreement with San Miguel Foods Inc. cannot be compared with the lease contract involving the property where Big Hotel stands, city officials said.
While it is true that the City Government leased a 31,769-square-meter area in Barangay Opao to San Miguel Foods for only 75 centavos per square meter per month, Vice Mayor Carlo Fortuna said this is because it is foreshore or submerged land that will be reclaimed and developed by the private company at no cost to the City.
This makes it completely different from the agreement that the City entered into with Katumanan Hardware Inc. (KHI) for the lease of a 1.4-hectare property in Barangay Tipolo for P12 per square meter per month and the sale of a 32,921-square-meter lot in Barangay Looc to the E.C. Development and Management Corp. (Ecodemcor) for P50 per square meter in 2015, another city official said, since both lots are not submerged.
The transactions involving the City-owned properties in Looc and Tipolo were undertaken when Rep. Jonas Cortes (Cebu, 6th) was mayor while the foreshore lease agreement was signed by Mayor Luigi Quisumbing in behalf of the City in 2017.
“Yes, Mandaue entered into a Foreshore Lease Agreement with San Miguel Foods that was witnessed by no less than Mr. Ramon S. Ang together with the entire City Council. It is to develop and reclaim the land to build the biggest plant of San Miguel Foods outside Manila. Unlike the contract of lease with Katumanan, this foreshore lease involves submerged land. They are entirely different from each other,” lawyer Elaine Bathan, chief of staff of Quisumbing, said in a text message.
Bathan issued the statement after a concerned citizen questioned the current administration’s move to run after city officials involved in the two controversial land deals.
Fortuna said the deal with San Miguel Foods is beneficial to the City. Even if it could not benefit from the use of the land yet, the lessee already started paying the City P23,759.25 per month or P285,921 per year shortly after the lease agreement was signed in September 2017.
The City will not spend even a centavo to reclaim the property.
Fortuna said that after San Miguel Foods reclaims the property, it will donate to the City 20 percent of the remaining land area after road networks and drainage systems have been identified.
Bathan said that if the City was to reclaim the property, it would have to spend at least P500,000 per square meter.
Fortuna said that San Miguel Foods plans to construct a food processing plant, feed mill and other manufacturing facilities on the reclaimed property.
It also plans to construct its own pier in the area.
Fortuna said the project will help provide jobs not only for Mandaue City resident but also for residents of other Metro Cebu areas.
Last year, the City Government filed a case in court to nullify the sale of the lot in Looc to Ecodemcor.
The City is also questioning the validity of KHI’s deed of assignment with Cenore Corp., which allowed KHI to sublease the property to Cenore.
For Bathan, the issue raised against the foreshore lease deal is clearly meant to discredit the city’s top taxpayer and to cover up the controversies hounding the two land deals done during Cortes’ time.
“Whoever this person is... Maliciously dragging other people and parties to create a smokescreen to deflect and cover up their wrongdoings will only compound their problem,” Bathan said. (From FMD of SuperBalita Cebu, JKV)