Business Mirror
Published on Monday, 19 August 2013 18:13 Written by Lenie Lectura
ABOITIZ Power Corp. is set to solicit bids for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract of its 300-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant in Toledo City, Cebu.
“We continue to develop it. We are writing up specifications and hopefully we will be soliciting bids probably by next month or two. So, we are now in the selection of equipment and getting offers from different contractors,” said Erramon Aboitiz, AboitizPower president and chief executive officer.
The $750-million power facility is targeted for commercial operation by end-2016 or early 2017. “Yes, we are on track to more or less what we said we wanted to do,” he said, when asked if the company is on track for its target. Construction, he added, is scheduled early 2014.
He said the company is also on track for its other power projects. “We’re doing the 300-MW coal facility in Davao which, hopefully, will be operational by early 2015. We are also looking at expanding the 735-MW Pagbilao coal plant by putting up a third unit. Of course, we are also doing a lot of the small hydro power plants. We are also looking at some geothermal sites.”
Aside from putting up new power plants, the company is also interested to purchase power assets that are being sold by the government.
The company, through unit Therma Power Visayas Inc., earlier submitted a letter of intent and participated in the pre-bid conference held last week for the auction of the power barges 101, 102, 103 and 104 which is scheduled to be held on October 9.
But Aboitiz noted that the company’s interest is “really to build more capacity rather than looking at buying existing assets.”
The company posted a 22-percent decline in net income for the first half of the year from P12.2 billion to P9.5 billion, mainly due to a non-recurring loss of P1.3 billion from the revaluation of loans and a P93-million non-recurring expense.
“Our first-semester performance is within our expectations. We are seeing good growth in power demand, which will dovetail well with our expansion strategy. Together with our partners, we have plans of investing an estimated P190 billion over the next five years to meet this growing demand,” Aboitiz said. source
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