The cat is out of the bag and now we know that the new Calatagan public market building in Batangas -which was the constructed out from this silly thing called bond flotation Pinoy-style- is largely idle and unoccupied. My source said there is an ongoing resistance of the Calatagan market vendors to transfer to and lease on high rentals and arkabalas in the new public market building.
From the projected high rentals and advances pegged in the planned new market building in Nabunturan and from the current pestering gripes and talks of the fire victim leasees of the stalls, the great chance is that this ambitious infrastructure project that Mayor Macario Humol wants to construct in his current last term will go down in the likes of fate of new Calatagan market building.
The comparative study of Nabunturan Local Finance Committee (LFC) has shown that bond flotation is too expensive with a lot of unpredictables than bank borrowing. The LFC informed the mayor of its adverse findings on bond float September last year. In its study it found out that the total expenditure of a P90-million bond float is at least P14 million greater than the expenditure that could be incurred in a borrowing with the Development Bank of the Philippines with the staggering P19.8 million for interest payment alone for the first two years.
Of these, it could immediately rip off at least P5.4 million of what we earlier said as unnecessary fees attached to the float that will go to the conspiring consultants, guarantors and brokers, and the assumed recurrent guarantee and trustee fees running to at least P1.3 million yearly. And these are besides the exorbitant P6.01 million for the architectural and engineering design! Divide P90 million by the land area of the planned market building which is 1,700 square meters, the result in P52,941 per square meter. Santa banana! What a skyrocketing project cost Nabunturan town people would have to bear at this crisis time!
Fire victim leasees of stalls are saying now they surely would be displaced as they could not afford with the planned high monthly rentals rates that increased tenfold from the P1,000 monthly rentals they used to pay on the average. And that’s besides the burden of paying the three months advance rentals and three months advance deposits.
Dried fish vendors are saying now they could not afford and their business would have a hard time breaking even in overhead cost even if they lease a small space of 18 square meters which would have a monthly rental of P11,340 after the P68,040 worth of three months advances. Humol’s planned infrastructure could yet trigger high prices of basic commodities as leasees, if ever there are, would only pass on to the customers this high cost of rental.
Time and again, we are reminded of the mothballed Bataan nuclear plant that even now keeps Filipinos paying staggering interests on foreign loans used to construct this White Elephant. At the rate the Preferred Ventures hoodwinked Nabunturan local officials into believing its whimsical FS that fixes unrealistic, high rentals and 100-percent occupancy rate projection despite a laggard town economy and general unawareness of the public on bond float, the planned and so expensive Nabunturan public building is White Elephant in the making. The right forecast on the project is rather doom even for among the local businessmen in the town business chamber.
The FS prepared by Preferred Ventures is just so good to be true in its bid of clinching the P2.7 million consultancy fee and opportunities it could gain in brokering for the underwriting and guarantee-making, while it could only and obviously easily make up the Nabunturan FS patterned from its easy-to-copy-and-paste FS templates and forms from other municipal bond floats it brokered which went a failure.
From this opposition alone against the high rentals, there surely would be a few takers of stalls, if none at all, making the planned infrastructure a White Elephant, even as there’s a looming scenario where nobody or only few individual bond buyers would be attracted to the project.
Now young practicing lawyers in Nabunturan are of the opinion that if the bond float so proceeds, the involved town officials are inviting suits. The LFC finding in itself is a corroborative evidence with its tacit assessment that the bond float is disadvantageous to the government. The lutong macao public hearing and the rush of legislating the Nabunturan bond float have procedural lapses and have shades of abuse of power and discretion.
Someone said that if he were Mayor Humol, who managed to serve as councilor, vice mayor and mayor now, unscathed and without any Ombudsman suit, he would have to immediately take the Nabunturan bond float out from the backburner and flush it to the kitchen sink instead, while his municipal coffer isn’t yet strained, than be thrown of books which could make him only regret later. (For online edition, visit my blog at: http://cha4t.wordpress.com)
