MEGAWORLD Corp. is spending P1.8 billion to construct a new mall inside its Pampanga township Capital Town.

In a statement Monday, the listed property developer said Capital Mall will offer 33,000 square meters (sq.m.) of gross floor area across three storeys. The mall will make use of materials recovered from the sugar mill owned by Pampanga Sugar Development Corp. (PASUDECO), which used to stand on the site of the township.

“As a tribute to the legacy of Pampanga’s oldest sugar mill, we will build the Capital Mall with its rich cultural heritage in mind. Other recovered portions of the sugar mill such as the giant bull gears, sprockets, and mechanical parts will become part of the mall’s interiors,” Megaworld Chief Strategy Officer Kevin Andrew L. Tan said in a statement.

The mall will have four cinemas, a food hall, and a shophouse strip. It will likewise feature a landscaped garden that will have restaurants and cafés surrounded by water ponds and century-old trees.

“Even the food hall will sport an industrial architecture highlighted by more mementos of the sugar central. The cinemas will also feature the 1960s charm and ambiance,” Mr. Tan said.

Megaworld will start construction by the first half of 2020, with target completion in 2022. Via www.bworldonline.com.

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Australian businesses in Southeast Asia have picked the Philippines as the most preferred destination for their expansion, a recent survey showed.

The Philippines has become the most popular market for Australian companies looking to expand, after being picked by 24 percent of survey respondents in the latest edition of Australian Business in Asean.

This marked the first time the country became the top pick of Australian businesses since the annual survey began in 2016.

The survey said 80 percent of businesses in the region plan to expand their operations by 2023, citing the growing middle class in Southeast Asia as among the factors that fueled their bullishness.

“The Philippines is now the most prominent destination for future investments, overtaking Vietnam in 2017 and Myanmar in 2016,” the 2019 survey read.

“Philippine trade with Australia has increased significantly over recent years while there has also been growing Australian investor interest in the Philippines,” the survey said.

Traffic congestion in the country, however, was identified as a “high-impact constraint on business” by the majority of respondents, followed by government bureaucracy and the tax system.

More than one-third, or 36 percent, of Australian companies here in the Philippines have been operating here for more than two decades.

The survey said companies continued to be attracted to the market, citing that 14 percent of the respondents had been operating in the country for less than two years. —ROY STEPHEN C. CANIVEL

Via Inquirer.net

Property developer Megaworld Corp. and state-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) have teamed up to create and jointly manage a 160-hectare new urban hub called Bonifacio Capital District (BCD) in the southern part of the former Fort Bonifacio military camp.

This partnership consolidates 88 ha of Megaworld’s existing township developments in the area with adjacent parcels of land that remain with the BCDA—which started privatizing Fort Bonifacio during the term of then Pres. Fidel Ramos in the mid-1990s into a new central business district (CBD) rebranded as BCD

BCD is distinct but envisioned to be on par with the older and larger hub known as Bonifacio Global City (BGC) master-planned by the Ayala group.

BCDA and Megaworld will create a policy review board which will have the exclusive jurisdiction to set policies and restrictions on the development of BCD and ensure the proper execution of the district’s master development plan and vision. There will be no new property transfer as the partnership covers only mostly branding and estate management.

BCD will encompass Megaworld’s existing township developments: the 54.3-ha McKinley Hill and the 34.5-ha McKinley West. BCDA, for its part, will fold in its 26-ha Philippine Navy Village, a 33.1-ha Bonifacio South Pointe property (under a partnership with the SM Group), the 10.1-ha Consular property beside McKinley West and another one-ha BCDA lot.

“It’s really an integration of all these properties and basically branding this entire district as one,” Kevin Tan, chief executive of Megaworld’s parent conglomerate Alliance Global Group, said in a press briefing on Thursday.

The 160-ha BCD is also envisioned to be the country’s “administrative capital,” as it will also soon house the Senate of the Philippines, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, BCDA chief executive Vince Dizon said.

BCD will have Lawton Avenue as its main road, with direct access points toward BGC via Lawton-Fifth Avenue connection; Makati CBD and Edsa via McKinley Road and Chino Roces Avenue Extension; South Luzon Expressway and NAIA Expressway via southern portion of Lawton Avenue; and C5 Road via Bayani Road and Upper McKinley Road inside McKinley Hill.

Read more via Inquirer.net.