SBMA chair cites ‘major gains’

The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) bagged its single biggest foreign direct investment in recent years, scored a record six new revenue increases this year, and doubled its fuel-storage capacity in 24 years, its chair, Martin Diño, announced on Monday.

Diño, in a press statement, bared these “major gains” by SBMA in the first quarter of 2017 to debunk reports of inefficiency amid a leadership row with other SBMA officials who, he said, opposed his ‘‘uncompromising crusade against corruption, smuggling and abuses of some Freeport officials victimizing business locators.’’

He said his exposés of a spate of smuggling, like the sewing machine declared as scrap materials and petroleum products,  and the botched importation of white sugar and substandard steel bars might have enraged those behind the racket, including officials with pending court cases.

Diño had been involved in a leadership row with SBMA administrator Wilma Eisma who accused him of exercising powers beyond his authority as chair. The law that created the SBMA vests the powers of the chair and administrator in just one person, but an administrative order by the then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo separated the two positions, resulting in a conflict between the two officials, both of whom were appointed by President Duterte.

Diño explained that he was only doing his job based on the marching orders of Mr. Duterte to clean Subic of corruption and bring back the Freeport to its former glory as a leading transshipment and logistics hub in Asia.

Under his term as chair, Diño said the SBMA approved the proposal of the Singapore-based Dynamic Konstruct International Eco Builders Corp. to build a $797 million new industrial estate at Redondo Peninsula where the Hanjin shipbuilding firm is located.

He also cited a 7.59 percent increase in revenue from P676.3 million in first quarter of 2016 to P727.6 million for the same period this year;  a 148-percent increase in net income from P18.8 million in Q1 2016 to P46.7 million in Q1 2017; a 24.84 percent increase in cash and investments; and more than P40 billion in new investments.

Diño said the Philippine Coastal Storage and Pipeline Corp., operator of petroleum-storage facilities in SBMA and the Subic-Clark fuel pipeline, opened only recently its three 180,000-barrel storage tanks and two tank-truck loading racks that increased its fuel storage capacity to 5.2 million barrels.