Vizcaya gets P750-million Casecnan estate tax

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines – This landlocked province is now richer by P750 million. 

This, after the US firm-owned California Energy (Cal-Energy), which owns and operates the Casecnan multi-purpose irrigation and power project here, paid its accumulated real property taxes, which the provincial government had long demanded.

Gov. Luisa Lloren-Cuaresma received the P750-million check from Joseph Sullivan, president of Cal-Energy Philippines, at the provincial capitol last Friday.

“This interim (payment) is the culmination of our hard work for the benefit of our province, especially for the young people who are the major recipients of this effort,” she said.

Sullivan said his firm settled its tax obligation as part of its social corporate responsibility as “we seek to continue providing more livelihood” to the residents in Casecnan’s project area. 

Aside from irrigating more than 500,000 hectares of farmlands in Central Luzon and parts of Pangasinan, the Casecnan project, built during the Ramos administration through a 20-year build-operate-transfer deal, is also generating some 100 megawatts of power for the Luzon grid.   The project siphons water from the Casecnan and Taal rivers in the Nueva Vizcaya towns of Alfonso Castañeda and Dupax del Sur and diverts it through 36-kilometer diversion weirs to the Pantabangan Dam in Nueva Ecija for irrigation and power. 

Cal-Energy’s move to settle its real property tax averted what could be a public bidding and sale of its facilities on Nov. 23, as the province had already issued a final notice of tax delinquency to the firm last September and a warrant of levy last Oct. 16. – Charlie Lagasca