‘Province to earn P600,000 monthly rental for 25 years’

A 1.2-hectare lot where the former Cebu City jail was located is set to become another revenue-generation project of the Cebu provincial government.

Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia said that the province would receive at least P600,000 as monthly rental for 25 years from Filinvest Development Corp. for the lease of the site.

Garcia was referring to the development by Filinvest of the site where the former Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center and the Cebu City Treatment and Rehabilitation Center were located.

Garcia said that the province would award the development of the area to Filinvest next month.

Earlier this month, Filinvest Development Corporation won the bid for the development of a 10-storey building that will soon rise at site.

BBRC has long been abandoned after the province built a new, modern jail in barangay Kalunasan. The CCTRC remains occupied up to this time.

Garcia, in a press conference last Saturday in Moalboal town, said that Filinvest would start paying the province P50 per square meter on the lot, 60 days after the province would award the bid.

She said these would be around P600,000 as monthly rental.

The development of the province-owned property will be under a build-transfer-operate scheme between the Cebu Provincial Government and Filinvest, where the ownership of the lot stays with the provincial government.

Meanwhile, Provincial Treasurer’s Office has set a higher collection target for the realty tax collection and other revenue generation of the province.

This year, the new schedule value for real property taxes went up 40 percent higher.

Garcia said that she would check the Provincial Treasurer’s Office by the middle of the year to see if whether the office could meet the target collection.

Other sources of revenue of the province come from sand and gravel, fees, governor’s permit under the revenue code, among others. /Correspondent Carmel Loise Matus