LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—“If the price is right”, the Hedcor Inc. will give its intention to operate the Baguio City owned Asin Mini Hydro dams, this according to Rene Ronquillo, Hedcor president in an interview.

“We still have to look into the Terms of Reference (TOR) offered by the city before we decide or not to operate the plants”, Ronquillo said.

Hedcor Inc. is the largest developer of run-of-river plants in the Philippines; it operated the Asin mini hydro plants from 1985 to 2006 when the plants were formally turned over to the city.

Recently, Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan said the city will soon bid out the city-owned mini-hydros to qualified private investors.

Domogan said the city has to pursue the privatization of the facilities immediately to prevent the city from incurring further losses just to sustain their operations.

We have not however, lost our interest to bid for the operations of the plants, Ronquillo clarified, in fact, during the past city administration, Hedcor has written the city three or four times of its willingness to operate the facility but I don’t remember receiving a response, he added.

But for the moment we have to see what is in the TOR and weigh the situation since it has been years that the plant has not operated fully and it may cost more than if we build a new one, he said.

According to him, whoever takes over Asin might have a difficulty operating the plants, if you go in now you will have to deal with the old ones, adding, one also has to contend with other problems regarding the right of way issue, water permits and the fact that we have to take out the old plant and building new ones.

Depending on the TRO it might be better building a new plant, he stressed.

Although unconfirmed, he said reports show a 40 percent share is being asked by the city from whoever will operate the plant aside from a P100 per square meter rental for the land owners affected.

If these will be the conditions, I doubt if there will be interested parties who will bid the project, Ronquillo said.

Hedcor Inc. is presently operating ten mini-hydro plants in Benguet with an operating capacity of 33, 750 Kilowatts.
The power generation company has recently signed an agreement with Barangay Tadiangan in Tuba for the development of another mini-hydro in Tuba. The construction phase will begin November this year.—larry madarang