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Manila Bulletin devider Business devider DOF won't support San Miguel's tax breaks

DOF won't support San Miguel's tax breaks

Published Aug 27, 2020 04:11 pm

The Department of Finance (DOF) is not amenable to the proposed legislative franchise granting tax exemptions for San Miguel Aerocity Inc.’s Bulacan airport project.

Finance Assistant Secretary Maria Teresa S. Habitan said the DOF will not support any tax exemptions for the San Miguel airport as this, if enacted into law, would set a precedent for future unsolicited proposals to the government to receive tax perks.

Habitan explained the P740-billion New Manila International Airport project in Bualakan, Bulacan is an unsolicited bid, which under the build-operate-and-transfer (BOT) law is ineligible for any government aid.

“Typically, for unsolicited bids, under the BOT Law, it says that the government is not allowed to give subsidies, guarantees, or even equities,” Habitan said during a virtual House ways and means committee hearing.

For this reason, Habitan said “the DOF is not supportive of giving the corporation or the unsolicited bid any tax exemption.”

“We have not done so in the past or in the other PPP projects that have been approved and are now being implemented,” she pointed out.

But the DOF official, however, admitted that the government had extended certain tax incentives to previous airport projects.

“All our other airports are only given an exemption on realty taxes,” Habitan said, noting that Ninoy Aquino International Airport has been exempted from income taxes because of “a very old charter.”

Last Wednesday, the House panel, chaired by Albay 2nd District Rep. Jose Maria Clemente Salceda, nodded the proposal to exempt San Miguel from all taxes during the construction of the Bulacan airport.

The tax incentives will cover San Miguel’s investment in the 2,400-hectare aviation hub, along with the land development outside the terminal buildings, and the construction of tollroads that run to the airport.

San Miguel Aerocity, a wholly-owned airport subsidiary of San Miguel Corp., has bagged the 50-year "game-changer" concession deal to build, operate, and maintain this unsolicited private-public sector project.

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