Interport offers to sell Palawan island for P54-M

Property holding firm Interport Resources Corp. has put up one of its major real estate assets – a tropical island in Palawan – on the auction block for a mere P54 million, a company official told the Philippine Stock Exchange.

IRC corporate secretary Mario Reyes said the board of directors has granted authority to the company’s executive director to sell Apo Island, an 896-hectare property in Barangay Bintuan, Coron, Palawan.

The island, acquired in 1976, will be sold at a price of only P6 per square meter.

Reyes said the sale would hopefully be finalized for stockholders’ approval during the regular annual meeting scheduled on July 8, 2003 at the Greenmeadows Clubhouse in Quezon City.

The sale of Apo Island would leave IRC with just a single tract of land, a 2,200-hectare property in Binangonan, Rizal which has not yet been fully developed since it was purchased in 1978.

IRC, which figured in the first local case against the alleged insider trading of its stocks in the early 1990s, was incorporated primarily to engage in the acquisition, reclamation, development or exploration of land, forests, minerals, oil, gas and other resources. The company initially ventured in oil exploration activities. It drilled two wells in Southern Mindoro and the Sulu Sea areas but the world recession in the late 1970s forced the company to cut down on exploration activities.

Since then, it shifted focus to real estate acquisition and development, bagging the two land areas in the late 1970s. Its activities, which had been confined solely to clearing and development of the company’s real estate in Rizal or take opportunities to expand its property holdings, were suspended since 1997 as a consequence of the Asian financial crisis.