BAGUIO CITY – The Sobrepeña-owned Camp John Hay Development Corporation (CJHDevCo) believes there will be a robust development within the 247-hectare John Hay Special Economic Zone (JHSEZ) because the right people were put in place by President Rodrigo R. Duterte to handled the affairs of the State-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA).
Robert John Sobrepena, CJHDevCo chairman, expressed optimism that President Duterte will be able to appoint the complete the members of the BCDA and John Hay Management Corporation (JHMC) boards the soonest for us to be able to start working on confidence-building measures that will help start the works for the development in the special economic zone to start moving on.
“We are just taking our time before we start working on things. The BCDA people now are obviously professional, reasonable, fair and output-oriented that is why we believe there will be positive results once we start working on things for the development of John Hay,” Sobrepena stressed.
The CJHDevCo official underscored the benchmark on the prposed renegotiation of the lease agreement of the special economic zone is the arbitral decision of the Makati-based Philippine Dispute Resolution Center (PDRC) that ruled that BCDA must pay the developer the amount of P1.4 billion in accumulated paid rentals while the CJHDevCo will turnover to the government the leased premises which has already become final and executory.
According to him, what is pending before the Supreme Court (SC) is the issue on the third party lessees wherein the Court of Appeals (CA) upheld the position of the developer that the third party rights must be protected and should not be part of the ones that will be ejected from the leased premises once government will takeover the declared special economic zone.
He claimed the last six years of legal and publicity battles between the two corporations have resulted in substantial losses on both the developer and the government because there were no movements in the development of the special economic zone while the revenue that was supposed to enter the coffers of the government were not realized.
The CJHDevCo executive pointed out the direction of the present administration is related to infrastructure development, job generation, economic upliftment and countryside development which is the inclination of the private sector that is why there is no reason why concerned parties cannot strike a good deal to put an end to the current impasse.
CJHDevCo also supprts the proposal of Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan to include the local government as a signatory to whatever agreement that will be signed after the conduct of negotiations so that the city’s 25 percent share from the annual lease rentals of the economic zone will be directly remitted to the city without passing through the tedious accounting and auditing procedures of the State corporation.
He added CJHDevCo is just waiting for the right time to talk things over with the new BCDA and JHMC officials who earlier signified their intention to swiftly resolve the existing conflict beneficial to the greater interest of the city.
By HENT