SM North EDSA
THE BIG news in transportation this week was the agreement on a unified railway station linking overhead trains in Metro Manila.
Of course, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade deserves recognition for bringing quite a collection of tycoons to the table despite the legal dispute the previous administration started and failed to resolve.
It was a big step forward in terms of the time and effort it took in getting the parties to just sit together and agree on something.
But for those reading the text of their term sheet a little closer, there was still more than a little uncertainty.
There was no fixed time frame, no fixed location (the “middle ground solution” placed it in the vicinity of “Edsa and North Avenue”), and of course, the Supreme Court injunction hanging over the whole issue was dependent on the final engineering design.
Recall that the lawsuit of SM Prime Holdings was triggered after the department in 2014 decided to move the proposed station’s location from SM North Edsa to rival Ayala Land’s Trinoma shopping mall. SM, taken by surprise, promptly sued for breach of contract.
We understand that more than losing the station, SM was really worried that such unilateral decisions on big infrastructure projects exposed their assets to other policies that could have business implications.
A vanishing station here means government could build another infrastructure project in its place. This makes it very hard, if not impossible, to plan for the future.
Yet, SM Prime officials led by Hans Sy were on the table this week along with tycoons Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala of the Ayala Group, San Miguel Corp.’s Ramon Ang and Metro Pacific Investments chair Manuel Pangilinan.
Moreover, the signing happened within the targeted 100 days of the Duterte administration.
Such cooperation among businessmen is not so common, which is why it makes news. Tugade touted it as the private sector banding together due to the “euphoria” created by Duterte’s administration.
That may be true. But to balance things out, we’re also hearing another narrative, one far less friendly. We don’t doubt that businessmen also want to do their share to help. But in recent circumstances, there’s apparently some degree of fear in the private sector.
After all, anyone can take a look at the swift fate of Roberto Ongpin’s Philweb, or even the mining sector.
One businessman told us that there was no choice but to cooperate with a popular administration. Another jokingly pointed out that thousands were surrendering in Duterte’s war on drugs.
“If we don’t cooperate, we might have to surrender our businesses, too,” the individual quipped. Miguel R. Camus
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