CICC
The Mandaue City government is set to assume ownership and administration of the controversial Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) as soon as it releases the first payment to the Cebu Provincial Capitol anytime within the year.
Mandaue City Mayor Gabriel Luis Quisumbing said that the City Legal Office is just waiting for the draft agreement from the Capitol, and after the document is signed, the city will the disburse its first payment of P150 million.
Stipulated in the draft agreement are the costing as well as the terms and conditions of administration of the property.
“We requested from the province that as soon as we release the first payment, we immediately assume administration of the CICC and open it up for possible developments,” Quisumbing said.
The Cebu province had agreed to sell CICC to the Mandaue City government for P350 million.
Quisumbing said the payment will be staggered in three years until 2019 or throughout the mayor’s first term of office.
The city will pay out P150 million this year, another P150 million in 2018 and the remaining P50 million in 2019. Quisumbing said the budget for the purchase of CICC had been set aside since 2015.
The sale of CICC to Mandaue City had been delayed to a later time since the Capitol still had to iron out a pending graft case before it could secure a clearance from the Commission on Audit (COA) and the Office of the Ombudsman.
CICC is the subject of a graft case filed by the Ombudsman against former Cebu governor and now 3rd district representative Gwendolyn Garcia and 11 other Capitol officials.
The building is currently being used by the province as a storage facility for donations and its perimeter as a temporary relocation site for around 600 affected families of a fire that hit barangays Guizo and Mantuyong last March 2016.
“After we acquire the property, we will open it up for possible PPP (public-private partnership) projects,” Quisumbing said, adding that he intended to have the building retrofitted massively then transform it into a commercial center so the city could earn tax income.
After an earthquake and Super Typhoon Yolanda struck the province, CICC had since become dilapidated. “I don’t want to spend several hundred millions to rebuild and develop it. I’d rather operate it as a convention center, maybe a commercial development, so that at least there would be tax income for the City of Mandaue and allow the city to recover over time what we’ve spent to acquire the building,” Quisumbing underscored.
In an interview last Thursday, CICC and Provincial General Services Office staff Jason Maceren told reporters that they are currently clearing out an area inside the Capitol Compound to make it as a new warehouse so that they could smoothly transfer the stored goods should the Mandaue City government take over administration of the facility.
“We are slowly disposing of the goods and donations there as a contingency approach,” Maceren said.
The city government is also eyeing to purchase a lot in the north where the Guizo-Mantuyong fire victims will be relocated, Quisumbing said.