San Miguel Corp. buys 51% stake in Ausphil Tollways

San Miguel Corp. will complete this month the acquisition of a majority stake in Ausphil Tollways Corp., a Filipino-Australian consortium and the main project proponent of North Luzon East Expressway. “We should be executing the share sale and purchase agreement with [SMC] by the middle of July. This is for 51 percent of Ausphil," Ricardo Penson, president and chief executive officer of Ausphil, told reporters. The transaction is worth over P1 billion, according to Penson, pointing out that SMC has a two-year option to acquire another 16 percent and boost its stake to 67 percent. The estimated cost of the 55.8-kilometer NLEE is P13.6 billion, extending northward from Commonwealth Ave. in Quezon City to as Cabanatuan City in Nueva Ecija. With the main NLEE expected to accommodate 69,000 vehicles a year, it could have adverse implications for the North Luzon Expressway or NLEX, which is owned and operated by Metro Pacific Investments Corp., SMC's main rival for dominance in the toll road business. Apart from being a toll road, NLEE will support a rainwater collection system as well as a 35-megawatt hydroelectric power plant in Bulacan, which can be expanded to 120 MW. The toll road is designed to act as a catch basin to harness about 15 million cubic meters of water that will be deposited into a reservoir connected to the Angat Dam – Metro Manila’s primary water source. Apart from NLEE, SMC holds a 35-percent stake in the all-Filipino consortium Private Infra Dev Corp., which is constructing the 88.5-kilometer Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway for P19 billion. —VS, GMANews.TV