Philippines' Filinvest submits sole bid for portion of former U.S. base

Philippine property firm Filinvest Land Inc submitted the lone bid for the right to develop a portion of a former U.S. military base into a master-planned city north of the capital, a government official said on Tuesday.
Filinvest Land offered to pay 160 million pesos ($3.4 million) to win the contract while other qualified bidders Ayala Land Inc and Megaworld Corp did not submit offers, said Arnel Paciano Casanova, president of state-run Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA).
The 288-hectare (711-acre) parcel, twice the size of London's Hyde Park, was the first lot of the total 9,500-hectare (23,475-acre) Clark Green City project to go on auction.

Filinvest would invest at least 5 billion pesos ($106.54 million) to develop the property, Casanova said.
BCDA, the state agency tasked to transform former military bases into mixed-use projects, will sign the joint venture contract next month ahead of the start of development in the second quarter next year, Casanova said.
The initial auction in April failed after qualified bidders Filinvest Land and top office landlord Megaworld did not submit offers. To attract more investors, BCDA upsized the offered lot from the previous 254 hectares and lowered the required investment amount.
Clark Green City is targeted to generate 1.57 trillion pesos ($33.41 billion) in economic activity annually, creating as many as a million jobs over a 25-year period, government studies show. ($1 = 46.9300 Philippine pesos) (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Sunil Nair)

Source : http://www.reuters.com/article/philippines-property-idUSL4N11E1UJ20150908