Megawide forms company for school infra project

MANILA, Philippines - Megawide Construction Corp. and parent firm Citicore Investment Holdings Inc. have formed a joint venture company to serve as the vehicle for the group’s school infrastructure project with the government.

Megawide won two school infrastructure packages under the government’s Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project. Under the build-lease-transfer contract, Megawide will build 2,885 classrooms in Region III and 4,259 in Region IV-A.

The government will make annual lease payments of P522.98 million for Region III classrooms and P760.49 million for Region IV-A classrooms for the next 10 years.

The two contracts form part of the government’s plan to build around 9,300 three-story and two-story classrooms complete with toilets to help plug the classroom backlog in the country.

 “The venture is seen to contribute to the objective of the government to accelerate the increase in the number of classrooms in public schools and cut its current shortage of around 66,800 classroom units nationwide,” Megawide said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Megawide, which is known for developing most of SM Development Corp.’s residential condominium projects, has been diversifying into other segments of the market to widen its investment portfolio.

The company earlier said it would participate in road and infrastructure projects including the Light Railway Transit Line (LRT) 1 extension project and the NAIA expressway. 

Megawide, partly owned by the family of retail tycoon Henry Sy, more than doubled its first semester profit this year to P474 million on the back of higher revenues.

Gross revenues expanded 31percent to P3.64 billion due to ongoing and newly-started projects Linear, Studio City and Studio Zen of of Filinvest Land, Jazz Residences Phase 2 and Grass Residences Tower 2 of SM Development Corp.