Jul. 31-- The government plans to lease out its property in Fujimi Cho, Chiyoda Ku in Tokyo, Japan, in the last quarter of the year, the Department of Finance said.

Finance Undersecretary Crisanta Legaspi said the government will auction off the country's remaining 4,360-square-meter Fujimi property to interested bidders for the right to develop it under a 50-year lease.

She said the privatization of the property would help the government raise revenues to finance vital projects.

The Finance department earlier said that it had prequalified nine of the 22 interested bidders for the right to develop the property.

In November 2003, the government auctioned off its assets in Kobe, Japan, together with the 2,489-square-meter property in the Nampeidai district in Tokyo.

In February last year, the Philippines had put on hold its Nampeidai project owing to an internal dispute between members of the Nagayama-Taisei Consortium.

The Nampedai property was one of three pieces of Philippine property in Japan offered to investors under the build-operate-transfer scheme. The government had signed 50-year service development agreements with Berg Co. Ltd for the 764.7-square-meter property in Naniwa-Cho, which has a net present value of 759.3 million yen (approximately $7.105 million), and the 3,014.87-square-meter Obanoyama property worth 449.6 million yen in Kobe, Japan.

Legaspi said the Nampeidai project would be auctioned off again next year.

The government has also lined-up for sale its stake in Philippine National Oil Co.-Exploration Corp. (PNOC-EC) and the 120-hectare Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) property in Taguig City later this year.

Legaspi earlier said the Cabinet has approved the sale of the FTI property this month. The property would be sold by blocks so the "developer can have flexibility to develop the lot in the best way possible," she said.

The Finance department wants to segregate the FTI property given existing short- and long-term leases of some private companies with the government.

The government expects to raise P30 billion from its privatization program this year, lower than last year's P90.6 billion.

The government has been accelerating the sale of its assets to make up for the collection shortfalls of the Bureaus of Internal Revenue (BIR) and of Customs.

First-half revenues slipped 4.3 percent to P545.7 billion from last year's P570 billion.

The national government registered a deficit in the first half of the year amounting to P153.4 billion from P18 billion in the same six-month period last year.

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