Unlike Team Energy, TAOEDC will not rip-off Sual - Arcinue

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

SUAL –The mayor here told media men that the new investor for the 600-900 megawatts (MW) coal-fired power plant will not be short changing this town unlike what Team Energy has been doing.

DUPED? Sual Mayor Bing Arcinue interviewed by media
 men on the the tax rip-off's brouhaha created by Team
 Energy

Mayor Roberto Arcinue said that the1,218 MW power plant deprived the public coffer here  by P331 million it owed as real property tax (RPT) after it paid P69 million only.
He said Trans-Asia Oil and Energy Development Corp. (TAOEDC) president and chief executive officer Francisco Viray promised him that after the 600- 900 MW power plant starts operation it will religiously pay the RPT of this mountain nestled rustic town.
“I told him in case they do otherwise I will not sign the construction permit of their company. But he (Viray) told me there was no problem for that because they will follow the contract”.
Arcinue explained that a hypothetical P1 million RPT where P500, 000 would be divided by P250, 000 for the School Board of this town and the other P250,000 for the School Board of the province of Pangasinan. The other P500,000, he cited, will be divided by 25%, 35% 40% to  Barangay Bacquioen (the host of the power plant), this town, and the province, respectively.
The mayor said TAOEDC will give employment and other benefits that will redound to some kind of economic development here.
As goodwill after the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement last November 22 at the town hall here, TAOEDC will give a grant of P110-million for priority projects here like education, health, environment and agriculture and a P10-million for the host barangay.

Viray said the other step after the MOA signing is the conduct of a feasibility study even as they are now undertaking an environmental impact assessment that would lead to the issuance of an environmental compliance certificate.
Arcinue is optimistic that more big-time investors would invest here after it was declared by law as special economic zone
Former Mayor John Arcinue, the son of the incumbent hizzoner, told this paper in 2013 that since 2011, his administration was already running after Sual Power Station (SPS) for the more than a hundred of millions of pesos business taxes SPS, the largest coal power plant in the Philippines, failed to pay the coffer.
The former mayor even compared the business taxes of SPS and and that of Quezon Power Plant (QPP) in Mauban, Quezon Province where both pay their taxes to local government units (LGU) that host them.
Arcinue said records given by their municipal treasurer showed that in 2013 Mauban,  which generates only 460 MW, paid to the LGU P95,106,000 while the Sual plant, a 1,218 MW, paid just a little more than P34-million to the treasurer’s office here.
He said the treasurer here wondered why the Sual plant was paying smaller taxes.
“There is a whale of difference,” Mayor Roberto Arcinue cited.