SUAL, Pangasinan – Officials here
led by Mayor Roberto Arcinue are optimistic that this fast-growing town would
likely pole vault to the top spot in the list of richest municipalities if the
plan to put up another power plant
pushes through.
Based on the latest Commission on Audit's Annual Financial
Report on LGUs, the municipality of Sual maintained
its position as the second richest municipality in the country with assets
amounting to P2.529 billion.
On top of the list is the town of
Cainta, Rizal with P3.98 billion.
Only Sual - among Pangasinan’s 44
municipalities – made it to COA’s top ten richest towns, besting such other
first class towns as the capital town of Lingayen, Bayambang, Mangaldan,
Malasiqui, Binmaley, and Calasiao.
“The people of Sual, indeed,
happily welcome this good news and we are confident that we might be able to go
up even to the number one spot if the plan to put up another power plant in our
town hopefully becomes a reality,” Mayor Arcinue told reporters.
The mayor said that the revenues
generated from the operation of the Sual Power Plant and from the hundreds of
fish cages in Sual Bay contribute to the town’s stable and strong financial
performance.
“This enabled Sual to jump up from
fifth class to first class municipality,” he said.
He said that with the real property
and business taxes collected from the power plant the municipal government has
been able to pursue various projects such as the construction of a new
municipal hall, legislative building, sports center, police headquarters,
health facilities, multi-purpose covered courts, day care and health centers in
all the barangays, school buildings, concreted roads, municipal wharf and many
more.
The municipality also bought
multi-purpose vehicles for every barangay, police patrol cars, and ambulances.
If the plan to put up another power
plant here materialize, he said, more projects and facilities are expected to
be put up or acquired, thus increasing the chances of Sual to go up in the COA
list possibly to the top spot.
Mayor Arcinue said ninety-nine
percent (99 %) of the people of Sual welcome the operation of a second coal-fired
power plant because of the huge benefits it will provide to the residents and
the municipality.
These include thousands of jobs,
more scholarship grants, continuous power supply to the municipality, cheaper
electricity, and millions of pesos in revenues estimated to be in the vicinity
of P800 million annually.
He explained that the revenue to be
generated from the second power plant is huge as it is privately owned,
compared to the existing Sual Power Plant which is partly owned by the National
Power Corporation which is exempted from paying real property taxes on the land
on which the plant was built.
“Ang maganda nito, yong proponent
ng bagong power plant ay willing to pay the taxes due to the local government
kaya tuloy-tuloy na ang pag-unlad ng Sual,” Arcinue said.
The mayor said that Korean Electric
Power Corporation (KEPCO) is investing roughly two billion US dollars for the
construction of the proposed 1,000-megawatt power plant in Sual (P.R)
No comments:
Post a Comment