PICOP to hale DENR chief to court

PICOP Resources Inc., the country’s largest integrated wood processing company, will take Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Heherson Alvarez to court for allegedly dragging his feet on the firm’s application for a timber licensing agreement.

In a letter to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), PICOP said this move will force Alvarez to face and answer the issues squarely since he "cannot show any valid reason why he has withheld the process and approvals but instead resorted to obfuscating the issues and twisting facts."

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has refused to grant PICOP’s integrated forest management agreement covering a vast 120,000-hectare forest area in Surigao del Sur, citing the firm’s inability to renew its corporate registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The DENR reasoned it cannot grant the logging permit since technically, the corporation is "dead" as it lacked any legal personality to transact business, enter into agreements or acquire any government franchise or license.

Alvarez, in a separate letter to the PSE, clarified that his department is not in any way "squeezing" PICOP and vehemently denied asking for "something substantial" as charged by PICOP officials.

"What we have always demanded from PICOP is the substantial compliance of the above enumerated requirements particularly the extension of PICOP’s corporate term, nothing more, nothing less. It would not be appropriate for DENR to enter into an agreement with a non-existent corporation," Alvarez said.

But PICOP explained that prior to the expiration of its corporate life on March 31, 2002, it filed with the SEC all the documents necessary to comply with the statutory requirements for such extension.

"If the extension is approved by the SEC, whose approval is necessary to make the amendment effective, such approval is retroactive to March 31, 2002. Obviously then, PICOP is not a dead company," PICOP said.

PICOP, formerly Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines, operates its milling plant and wood plantation in Bislig, Surigao del Sur. Once Southeast Asia’s largest integrated wood and paper milling company, PICOP was listed in 1973 and transformed into a holding firm in 1997 as it ventured into particleboard manufacturing and palm oil plantation.

Last year, PICOP generated total revenues of P2.422 billion but has remained in the red with net losses of P215.352 million.