Del Rosario-led conglomerate PHINMA Corporation is shifting its focus to housing with the launch of two projects this year as it aims to replicate its success in the field of education by helping address the massive backlog in mass housing.
During the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines Inaugural Meeting, PHINMA Chairman and CEO Ramon del Rosario Jr. said: “We try to do our small part through our various businesses by focusing on providing the underserved sectors improved access to what we call the essentials of a dignified life.”
With this goal, he noted that PHINMA Education now stands as the largest private educational network in Southeast Asia with over 167,000 students across 12 schools in the Philippines and Indonesia.
“Based on these inroads we have achieved in education, I am now turning my attention to housing. I have told our property company that I would like PHINMA to do in housing what we are doing in education by building decent homes and wholesome communities that are accessible to the underserved sector who need and deserve these homes the most. But the sad reality is that our country continues to face a housing crisis that affects millions of Filipino families, with many still living in subhuman conditions,” he said.
Del Rosario also said that “I know we face major challenges, but I am hopeful that if we are able to show that socialized housing can be an attractive business, others hopefully will join us.”
For this new focus on housing, PHINMA will be starting small with just a 200-unit project in Davao to test whether their concept will work. The unit price will be within the ceiling of PAG-IBIG home financing of P750,000 to P800,000.
“Our first project will be in Davao. We're calling it community housing. So that it's not just physical homes. It's building communities. And the idea there is to put some of the basic necessities that families need, such as daycare center, skills upgrading facilities, even employment opportunities and stuff like that,” Del Rosario said in an interview at the sideline of the event.
He explained that “the idea is to build communities. That's why the person we hired to lead the program is the actual current chairman of Gawad Kalinga. His name is Luis Oquinena and he has joined us full-time as one of our senior vice presidents, but specifically in charge of what were calling community housing.”
After Davao, PHINMA will be launching its next housing project in Bacolod and, maybe later, in Iloilo. The next project was supposed to be in Iloilo but the property PHINMA acquired turned out to be not suitable because it was very marshy land.
“It proved to be too expensive to build there. So we are not pursuing that for the moment. Were looking for other sites in Iloilo,” said Del Rosario.
He stressed that they are still testing the concept. "We really want to make sure we know what we're doing and that we can do it at scale and at a reasonable cost and, hopefully, generate reasonable profits as well. The way we’re doing it in education,” he added.
Del Rosario said PHINMA will also partner with other groups in this endeavor “because it's very difficult to do it all by ourselves. Groups like Gawad Kalingang and hopefully others.”
He said they are also looking for suitable properties for community housing projects in Luzon since this is where the biggest backlog is.