Megawide drops casino from Philippine airport project plans

Jul 08, 2019 Newsdesk Latest News, Philippines, Top of the deck  

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Property developer Megawide Construction Corp is abandoning its ambition to put a casino near the international airport serving the central Philippine city of Cebu, the Manila Standard reports.

The online edition of the newspaper carried on Sunday a report quoting the Megawide corporate affairs chief, Manuel Louie Ferrer, as saying in a recent interview that his company will go ahead with building three hotels beside the airport on Mactan (pictured), an island adjacent to Cebu, but will leave a casino out of its plans.

The Manila Standard says Megawide and businessman Dennis Uy, an associate of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, had been negotiating the development of 4 hectares (10 acres) of land on Mactan, envisaging hotel accommodation and a casino on the site, but the negotiations came to nothing.

In May an executive of PH Resorts Group Holdings Inc, a listed arm of the privately owned Udenna Corp, said PH Resorts would borrow up to US$420 million to build a casino resort on the island.

The executive, PH Resorts president Raymundo Martin Escalona, told reporters that the company would raise up to 70 percent of the US$600 million it needed for the resort by borrowing, and the rest by issuing equity. The resort will be called The Emerald.

The first phase of The Emerald is due to have 400 hotel rooms, and a casino containing 100 gaming tables and 600 electronic gaming machines. PH Resorts means to finish its Mactan casino resort in 2020.

The Manila Standard quotes Mr Ferrer of Megawide as saying his company will start construction of its first hotel by the airport on Mactan in 2019, and open it within the next two years. The report says the hotel will have 350 rooms and be run by an international hotelier.

Together, the three Megawide hotels by the airport on Mactan will contain 1,000 rooms, the newspaper says.

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