Biz Buzz

Marooned marina

It’s not just Ashmore that businessman Roberto Ongpin has to worry about.

The long simmering dispute between the former Marcos trade minister and another of his business partners, the Wenceslao family, has apparently come to a head, resulting in Ongpin’s Alphaland Corp. officially announcing that its P2-billion Marina project would be delayed.

In a letter sent to members of the Alphaland Marina Club last week, Ongpin disclosed that he has had a disagreement with D.M. Wenceslao and Associates, whom he said had thought that it would get the construction contract “but didn’t, because they were more expensive.”

(Businessman Ding Wenceslao is Ongpin’s joint-venture partner for the project, with the Marina originally set to be built on the former’s property located between the SM Mall of Asia complex and the Solaire casino hotel.)

According to Ongpin, the disagreement has caused him to move construction to the south side of the property (presumably controlled by him) to avoid Wenceslao’s “unsavory and illegal actions” (which supposedly included blocking access to the site, preventing construction equipment from moving in).

In any case, Ongpin announced that the Marina project would now be redesigned to accommodate an on-land marina clubhouse (instead of the original design which had it jutting out into the bay, standing on stilts).

Supposedly, this was after they discovered that that the original design was not feasible because the bedrock on which the underwater piles would have to be thrust was deeper than initially thought. (We hear, however, that an influential anti-Ongpin politician had actually convinced Malacañang to withdraw the reclamation permit for the clubhouse.)

To assuage his investors, Ongpin announced that buyers of Marina Club shares (there are about 200 or so who have bought at prices between P1 million and P1.5 million since it was launched in 2012) would get to use the facilities of Alphaland City Club in Makati for free.

Will it be enough to calm these investors’ jitters? We shall see. Daxim L. Lucas

Figaro in Qatar

While the likes of Starbucks and other gourmet coffee chains are invading the archipelago, homegrown coffee chain Figaro is likewise expanding its overseas footprint.

Figaro Coffee Co. is breaking into a new market in the Middle East, having signed up a franchising deal with a firm based in Doha, Qatar. The firm, Caliber Trading Agencies and Franchising plans to open the first Figaro store in Qatar by June this year. The master franchisee, however, has yet to decide on the location for the first store in Doha. The group is still in the process of finalizing its roadmap since the location for the first store is critical to the introduction of the Figaro brand in this new market.

Caliber Trading Sevices is part of the Fahad Bin Abdulla Bin Thani Al Thani (FBA) group, which is into infrastructure development and real estate businesses. Caliber has dealership arrangements with renowned international products for infrastructure, industrial, petrochemical, home appliance food and grains. It is now breaking into the food and beverage business and has chosen Figaro—now a 20-year old enterprise—as the coffee shop brand to be launched in Qatar.

Caliber Trading was also given the exclusive franchising right to open Figaro stores in other Arabian states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Aside from bringing itself to overseas Filipinos, Figaro aims to attract locals and expats, confident that the Figaro concept would suit any nationality. Last year, Figaro has signed up a franchisee in the United Arab Emirates.

For this year, Figaro plans to open five more stores in the Middle East, in line with its aspiration to reach at least 40 stores in Gulf countries by 2024. Doris C. Dumlao

Skewed against Stradcom

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling last year recognizing businessman Cezar Quiambao as the rightful owner of Stradcom Corp., it seems the travails of the Land Transportation Office’s current IT provider are far from over.

LTO’s parent department, the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), of course, wants a new company to be in charge of the issuance of drivers’ licenses and motor vehicle registration cards. And Biz Buzz learned that based on the terms of reference that the DOTC had issued, it has become all but impossible for Stradcom to qualify for the new contract, notwithstanding the good service it has rendered all these years.

For one, DOTC requires that any system to be implemented by LTO should have already been used overseas. That makes it virtually impossible for any local firm to participate in the contract.

It also requires that the entire project be up and running within a year from the award of the contract. (Take note, of course, that the Bureau of Customs’ computerization program that was started in 2005 has yet to be fully implemented today.)

We also hear that officials of LTO—being the end-user of the project—were not event consulted by DOTC’s lawyers when they crafted the terms of reference for the project.

The new system will also integrate the systems involving the issuance of drivers’ licenses with vehicle registrations. Instead of being able to claim his license in 30 minutes, an applicant would have to wait for the card to be mailed to his address. (Who knows how long that would take?)

Finally—and most importantly —Stradcom has yet to be paid some P4 billion in back fees owed to it by the government, for services it continued to perform amid all those nuisance suits filed against it. Even tax authorities have recognized Quiambao as the rightful owner when they dunned his company for taxes last year (which he has paid).

So what’s keeping DOTC from acting on this issue? Daxim L. Lucas

Of movie dates

Most people are probably anticipating as early as now the exciting lineup of Hollywood blockbuster productions in 2014, from the latest X-Men installment to the conclusion of the Hunger Games saga, but not our favorite tax chief Kim Henares.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue head, who has earned a reputation for being tough on tax cheats across all segments and professions, simply doesn’t think of movies, Hollywood or otherwise, as an ideal way of de-stressing, Henares told BizBuzz. She even described an 11-year movie theatre absence in the 90s that was only broken when she saw Jack Black’s Shallow Hal in 2001.

Either way, she deals with enough celebrities and personalities as part of her job. This includes boxer turned congressman Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao, who has yet to apply for any compromise in connection with a P2.2-billion tax case, she said.

But there are still some people Henares has difficultly turning down, including friend and boss President Aquino. Among the latest films they watched together were last year’s White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen.

As those titles suggest, the movies have to do with threats to the United States’ head of state—and his famous residence—but Henares said it was something Aquino insisted that his Presidential Security Group see as well.

“It’s about bad elements and a breach of the security,” she quipped.

What Henares really likes doing during her downtime is reading books, mainly thrillers. The latest was the Shane Schofield series written by Australian author Matthew Reilly, which was also recommended by President Aquino.

For those wondering, the discussion on movies with Biz Buzz happened, ironically, during the opening of the IMAX theatre in the SM Mega Fashion Hall, where she was a guest, recently.

The brand new theatre is expected to draw crowds to SM Megamall’s newest wing, as if people weren’t going to do that already. Just don’t expect our tax chief to be among them. Miguel R. Camus

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