Baguio won’t allow firm to reassign market contract

MARKET TRIP No visit to Baguio City is complete without a trip to the summer capital’s public market, where fresh vegetables and flowers from Benguet, sweets and assorted “pasalubong” are sold. KARLSTON LAPNITEN

BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — The city government last week said it would not allow the Uniwide Group of Companies to reassign its 1996 lease contract to modernize the public market here to another company.

It said it had set in motion retaking the market from the former retail giant, which had not improved the facility for the last 22 years despite a P1.7-billion contract to build and operate a six-story market building.

Locked in litigation for 20 years when vendors questioned the ordinance privatizing the market, the Uniwide contract was upheld by the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court in 2016.

But Uniwide and its subsidiaries were dissolved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2013.

Mayor Benjamin Magalong said the city expected to confront a legal challenge from Uniwide chair Jimmy Gow, who might request the government to reassign the market contract to another firm.

Not consenting

“If Gow has the right to assign the contract to another company—only to a subsidiary — he must do so with the consent of the city. We will have to stipulate that we are not consenting,” Magalong told city officials and councilors on Monday.

The mayor said he turned down a representative of Asia Amalgamated Holdings Corp., who asked him to meet with Gow three weeks ago.

As far as the city was concerned, Uniwide had ceased to exist, so the city council would inform the liquidator that the Uniwide contract “is deemed terminated” through a resolution, said Councilor Betty Lourdes Tabanda, chair of the council’s committee on laws.

The Baguio market contract was not included in the list of assets Uniwide had surrendered for liquidation, Magalong said, citing checks made by a consultant.

A court in Parañaque City had been tasked to administer Uniwide’s liquidation to pay its debtors.

Magalong said the city government would inform the liquidator about its decision regarding the Uniwide contract, so it could secure the approval of the court and “release Baguio from its obligations.”

Uniwide had declared bankruptcy after it encountered financial difficulties following the 1997 Asian currency crisis. The SEC had determined that the company had been shouldering more debts than assets and could no longer be rehabilitated.