Megawide shelves export plan to focus on PPP

MANILA, Philippines - Megawide Construction Corp., one of the country’s top building contractors, has temporarily shelved its plan to export pre-fabricated construction materials to Southeast Asian neighbors.

Instead, the listed construction company will return to the drawing board for its export plans as it focuses on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects and existing contracts, a ranking company executive said.

“We bumped into some obstacles but we are still keen on exporting,” Megawide chief financial officer Oliver Tan said in an interview.

“We still have to go back to the drawing board.”

Megawide earlier targeted to start the shipment of pre-fabricated construction materials to a Southeast Asian residential project contractor this year, in line with the company’s plans of diversifying its revenue stream in the long run.

The firm’s P1-billion pre-cast production plant in Taytay, Rizal is the biggest one-stop shop of pre-cast concrete building systems in the country and one of the largest in Southeast Asia. Construction materials such as beams, columns, stairs and walls are produced in the plant.

In the meantime, Megawide will focus on big-ticket infrastructure projects and existing contracts to maximize its production capacity.

“There’s so many things going on locally,” Tan said, adding that pre-fabricated slabs are increasingly being used in local construction projects.

He said their current projects are sufficient to keep the pre-fabrication plant busy with a utilization rate of around 70 percent.

Megawide has bagged four PPP projects to date: the P17.5-billion Mactan-Cebu International Airport, the P5.7-billion new Philippine Orthopedic Center, PPP School Infrastructure Project Phase One (PSIP-1) and PSIP-2.

“Infrastructure is needed in the country to facilitate the delivery of basic services to the population,” said Megawide president Edgar Saavedra, adding that the company has the technology to deliver infrastructure projects.

Megawide, which started as a contractor for residential towers, particularly those of SM Development Corp., corners between 15-17 percent of the high-rise construction business in the Philippines.

Last month, Megawide announced it is venturing into $100 million worth of power generation projects.