By Richmond Mercurio (The
Philippine Star) | Updated July 7, 2016 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines – Phinma Corp.
is preparing big plans for its energy and education businesses, two industries
which the conglomerate intends to invest heavily into in the coming years, its
top executive said.
“We’re focusing on education and
energy side as we move forward,” Phinma president and chief executive officer
Ramon del Rosario Jr. told The STAR in an interview.
For its energy business, Del Rosario
said the group is gearing towards developing more gas-fired power plants as
part of its plan to expand its portfolio which currently includes a mix of
conventional and renewable energy sources.
“We’re taking our cue. We’re
probably more towards gas, although we do have clean coal plants in the
planning horizon. It’s still there. But we’ll wait to see how their (the
current administration) policies evolve. We’re open minded but we do want to
expand our portfolio on power generation,” he said.
For its education business,
meanwhile, Del Rosario said the company is ready to take on its maiden
international foray with the opening of a nursing school in Myanmar next month
Del Rosario said the Myanmar
investment is intended to be the first of many planned in Southeast Asia.
“This will be our first foray abroad and we
want to see if that will encourage us to do more for education for the poor in
Southeast Asia,” he said
“Locally, we’re still looking out
for more schools to acquire,” Del Rosario added.
Phinma schools in the country
include Southwestern University, University of Iloilo, Araullo University,
Cagayan de Oro College and University of Pangasinan.
For its Myanmar venture, Phinma is
investing about P200 million initially, according to Del Rosario.
“We chose nursing because there is
this huge demand for nursing. The model we’ve adopted here, we hope we can
adopt in other countries in Southeast Asia. We’re looking at Myanmar first and
we’re looking at Vietnam also,” he said.
Aside from energy and education, the
Phinma Group is also into hotels, real estate, consultancy and steel products.
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