MANILA, Philippines — State-run Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) is resorting to a negionated sale offers for the 650-megawatt Malaya Thermal Power Plant(MTTP) and its underlying land in Pillila, Rizal.
In an advisory, PSALM’s Bids and Awards Committee said interested parties can join the negotiated sale process and submit offers for the MTTP.
PSALM said the minimum bid price for the MTTP is P2.007 billion.
“A financial offer submitted lower than the minimum offer price shall be rejected outright,”it added.
Deadline for the submission of letters of interest is on Oct. 22, 3 p.m.
The negotiation package may be secured from PSALM upon submission of a duly executed and notarized confidentiality agreement and undertaking. The package includes the negotiation procedures and the asset purchase agreement.
PSALM said only interested parties that have been issued the negotiation package would be allowed to participate further in the negotiated sale.
Last month, the MTTP went through another round of failed bidding after the two pre-qualified bidders, namely Panasia Energy Inc. and AC Energy Philippines Inc.,did not submit a bid.
The minimum bid price for the MTPP for the third round of public bidding was set at P2.19 billion, lower than the minimum bid price of P4.48 billion in the previous round of bidding.
“The PSALM board already rationalized and lowered the minimum bid price of Malaya in the hope that the bidders would be encouraged to submit their bids. It is regrettable that despite the reduced minimum price, still no bidder submitted a bid,”PSALM president and CEO Irene Besido-Garcia said earlier.
“We will need to get board approval to immediately commence the negotiated process of privatization. PSALM must exhaust the available legal process to dispose Malaya because we are incurring substantial losses in continuously maintaining it,”she said.
The MTTP was declared a “must run unit” in 2014.
“The average annual net loss of PSALM if based on the years that it is running as a must run unit (2015 to 2019) is P556.2 million,” PSALM said.
In 2019, PSALM conducted two rounds of bidding for the sale of the assets, but these were declared “failed” due to lack of interested bidders.
PSALM proceeded to a negotiated sale with the lone bidder of the then second round of bidding but it was also declared a failure because the offer was below the minimum bid price set for the assets.