JBIC grants additional loan for rehab of Tiwi-MakBan

The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) will extend additional funds for the rehabilitation of the Tiwi-Makban geothermal power plants, a National Power Corp. (Napocor) official said.

In a press conference over the weekend, Napocor vice president and head of Genco 6 (which manages the Tiwi-Makban plants) Reynaldo J. Santiago said: "JBIC is proposing a wider scope for rehabilitation and willing to give more financial support. We are now studying rehabilitation activities to determine which of the deleted ones should be reconsidered under new funding from JBIC," Santiago said.

At the same time, Santiago said JBIC has agreed to extend the existing ¥7.56-billion and ¥6.63-billion loans for the Tiwi and Makban partial rehabilitation.

The JBIC loan expired last month. "Before the expiration date of the loan, we were asked by JBIC to submit some papers and after that we were able to get an extension of up to 2004," he said.

The Napocor official said by 2004, they expect to complete the partial rehab of the Tiwi-Makban plants. Aside from the additional funds, he said JBIC had also refunded some of Napocor’s advances to the project.

Some P40 million worth of advances by Napocor to repair one of the cooling towers of the Makban plants was reimbursed by JBIC.

But he said the JBIC has some conditions in granting the loan extension such as that Napocor should hire the services of the original contractors and manufacturers of the spare parts (in this case it’s Mitsubishi of Japan); and the plants should be privatized after the rehabilitation.

"We will ask authorities to sell the Tiwi-Makban plants at the later date or after 2004," he said, noting that the government could fetch a much higher price if they will sell the newly-rehabilitated plants. – Donnabelle Gatdula