{"id":46758,"date":"2015-04-12T01:19:57","date_gmt":"2015-04-11T17:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=46758"},"modified":"2015-04-12T01:19:57","modified_gmt":"2015-04-11T17:19:57","slug":"ayala-group-boosting-energy-infrastructure-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/04\/12\/ayala-group-boosting-energy-infrastructure-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Ayala Group boosting energy, infrastructure projects"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ayala<\/a>
Ayala Triangle in Makati City (Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA — Conglomerate Ayala Corp. is boosting its new portfolio of businesses in power generation and transport infrastructure as it targets ramping up profit to Php20 billion at least in the next two years.<\/p>\n

John Eric Francia, head of Energy and Infrastructure Group at Ayala Corp., said the demand is there as the Philippine economy grows strongly.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The Philippines is) the fastest growth in this part of the world in Southeast. We need infrastructure to support such a growth that\u2019s at high level, that\u2019s what driving us to really participate in both in infrastructure and energy,\u201d he said in an interview after the conglomerate stockholders\u2019 meeting Friday.<\/p>\n

Francia said the conglomerate is embarking on four power plants \u2013the South Luzon Thermal Energy Corp.\u2019s Calaca thermal power plant, the North Luzon Renewable Energy Corp.\u2019s 81-megawatt (MW) wind energy power plant in Ilocos Norte, the 18-MW expansion of Northwind project and GNPower Ltd. Co.\u2019s coal-fired power plant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have reached financial close and will be starting the construction soon of the GNPower Mindanao project. The biggest in our pipeline is another power plant in Bataan \u2013that\u2019s 2 x 600 MW (coal-fired) power plant,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

With these projects, Francia said Ayala is on track at hitting a total of installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts by 2016.<\/p>\n

He said the completion of more power projects in the pipeline will provide the conglomerate an additional 500 megawatts capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross the country, we probably need around 600 to 700 megawatts of additional capacity every year\u2026 So we are hopeful that we always want to contribute meaningfully in terms of that overall development,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On boosting its transport infrastructure business, Francia further said the conglomerate is participating in the bidding for various public-private partnership (PPP) projects.<\/p>\n

He said Ayala Corp. is bidding on the Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 2 Operation and Maintenance Project, Manila Water Co. Inc. on the Bulacan Bulk Water project, Ayala Land Inc. on Laguna Lakeshore Expressway-Dike Project and Southwest Terminal of the Integrated Transport System (ITS) project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are keen on rail projects. (Once) PNR (Philippine National Railways) bids out (these projects), we will take a serious look at that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Francia said these power and transport infrastructure projects are expected to contribute to the conglomerate\u2019s overall net income starting this year.<\/p>\n

\u201c I think next year would be obviously supposedly a better year as these plants get into more steady state\u2026 Of these four plants, steady state would hopefully be achieved by 2017 (which is) also the expected commissioning of the GN Mindanao plant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo hopefully by 2018, these will contribute as well. As more projects reach financial close and start construction, hopefully that will paint a growth picture all the way to 2020,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Ayala chairman and chief executive officer Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala said the conglomerate earmarked Php185 billion in capital spending this year mainly to support the aggressive expansion plans of its real estate and telecommunications units as well as continued investments in power and infrastructure initiatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA — Conglomerate Ayala Corp. is boosting its new portfolio of businesses in power generation and transport infrastructure as it …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":17832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,19,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-business","category-news-ph","mauthors-leslie-d-venzon","mauthors-philippines-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}