PSALM to auction Tiwi-Makban plants

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) will auction the Tiwi-Makban geothermal power plants after the failed bidding of the Manila Thermal Power Plant (MTPP).

“We will hold the Tiwi-Makban bidding next after MTPP,” PSALM vice president for asset management and electricity trading Froilan Tampinco said.

This was the same schedule set by PSALM late last year after it decided to postpone the sale of the Palinpinon geothermal power facilities.

It will be recalled that PSALM scheduled Tiwi-Makban and the Tongonan geothermal Bohol oil-fired plant as the first big ticket items to go for sale in the first quarter of this year.

He said Palinpinon will be part of the assets to be sold in the middle of the year.

Earlier, he said Angat hydro power facility and Sucat oil-fired power plant, on the other hand, will be in the list of the last generating assets that will be sold by the asset disposal firm. “We will be disposing Angat and Sucat in 2009,” he said.

Based on the timetable of PSALM, it was supposed to sell 50 percent of Napocor’s generating plants in Luzon and Visayas by end-2007 but this was not realized due to failure to auction off Palinpinon.

But PSALM president Jose Ibazeta said that they would be able to achieve the 70 percent privatization by September this year as they would also start bidding out Napocor’s supply contracts to IPPAs (independent power producer administrators) by this time.

By 2009 or earlier, PSALM hopes to fully dispose all the generating assets of the National Power Corp.