BIMP-Eaga countries want RP to waive or lower real-estate taxes

Written by Manuel T. Cayon / Reporter

Wednesday, 11 November 2009 18:36

DAVAO CITY—The four countries of the East Asean Growth Area (Eaga) want the Philippine government to waive or lower tax on renting properties or putting up big-ticket investments in Mindanao and Palawan, in a fresh indication of their continued interest in these places as preferred investment site in this part of the subregion of the Asean. The request for property-related incentives was conveyed at the recent summit of heads of state and senior officials in Thailand, where representatives of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines BIMP, comprising the BIMP-Eaga, were in attendance. Secretary Jesus Dureza, the presidential adviser on Mindanao affairs, told reporters here that Malaysia has requested the Philippines “to waive real-estate taxes, especially with the decision of one of its business groups to revive operation of the Samal Casino Resort Hotel [in the Island Garden City of Samal].” On the part of the Philippines, the local governments in Mindanao may likely consider it. “But the national taxation is not decided on it yet, because of the concern that waiving it may open the floodgate for other countries.” “It would be a policy issue to be studied carefully,” Dureza said. The Malaysian Ekran Berhad Services, operator of several hotels and resorts in Malaysia, announced in August this year, also during a senior officials’ meeting in Brunei, that it was reopening the P1.5-billion casino and resort. The company also told Philippine officials and local government officials that it planned “to work on mounting flights between Davao and Kota Kinabalu, in partnership with Malaysian Airlines, to coincide with the reopening of the resort.” Ekran Berhad has opened only 245 rooms in 1998, from a planned 1,400-room resort, before it closed in 2001 due to the Asian financial crisis. The resort and hotel sprawls on an area of 250 hectares and includes space for a planned golf course. Malaysian airlines folded its Davao flight also in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. The request to waive Philippine local real-estate tax was one of the highlights of the October 25 leaders’ summit, which also included the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between BIMP-Eaga and China, one of the three northeastern Asian countries admitted as observers to Asean’s subregional group. The others are South Korea and Japan. Other commitments include a more aggressive push on BIMP’s ecotourism sector, but with special caution to “protect, conserve and sustainably manage [its] rich marine and terrestrial resources, such as the Heart of Borneo and Coral Triangle initiatives.” Alongside ecotourism, the BIMP also vowed to implement more initiatives to develop the former backwater regions of the four countries into a food basket of the Asean and the rest of Asia. But it also promised to resolve existing bottlenecks, especially in uniform customs, immigration, quarantine and security issues, to energize the food-basket goal and other objectives of the BIMP-Eaga.