Palace intervention to end John Hay impasse

By Dexter A. See  

BAGUIO CITY April 27 – Camp John Hay Development Corporation urged President Aquino to intervene in the current conflict with the state-run Bases Conversion and Development Authority over alleged violations of the CJHDevCo of the lease contract for not paying their rent worth millions of pesos.

            Alfredo Yniguez, CJHDevCO executive vice president and chief operating officer, said the company has no plans of abandoning their contract with BCDA to develop the required 18 hectares out of the 247-hectare John Hay Special Economic Zone to provide tourists with alternative destinations and develop more condominium units, country and log homes for high-end individuals.

            “We are bullish about our projects within our leased area. Were bullish about the tourism potentials of Baguio,” Yniguez said.

            “We had been through four Presidents, six changes in the BCDA administration and four changes in the local government, thus, we will not just leave and abandon our investments.

            According to him, it is only President Aquino who can force BCDA officials to sit down in the mandatory arbitration as contained in the case filed by the developer before the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center so that the breaches of both parties could be pinpointed and possible solutions to the same will be immediately addressed.

            “CJHDevCo has already infused a little over P5 billion in investments and the put up of added infrastructure inside John hay over the past 16 years,” he said, adding that “the company has also paid to BCDA a total of P1.44 billion representing partial payments of its lease rentals prescribed in the original and revised lease agreements.”

            “Since we were awarded the right to develop John Hay in 1996, BCDA had already committed breaches in our contract, particularly the non-delivery of 32 hectares developable area and the delays in the issuance of the Environmental Compliance Certificate and the demolition of illegal structures within the leased area among others,” Yniguez said, citing that “such breaches resulted to the signing of the first revised memorandum of agreement in 2000.

            The CJHDevCo official claimed BCDA was only able to deliver 4.5 hectares out of the 18 hectares developable area up to the present, thus, they could not do the full blast development considering that their problems are compounded by the delays in the issuance of the required permits and clearances from concerned government agencies as committed by the BCDA in the third RMOA.

            “From 2007-2011, we were not able to implement our P5 billion investments to build more housing units and commercial town centers within the developable area which translated to over P11.6 billion in supposed income for our company,” Yniguez s said.

            Yniguez said there must be a “win-win solution” to be reached by both parties in the current conflict if they sit down together in arbitration and not through media campaign since it is the city government of Baguio which is at the losing end considering that the local government will not be able to get its 25 percent share from the lease rentals supposed to be paid by the developer to BCDA.