NO one showed up at the scheduled public bidding on Tuesday for a 60-hectare property in Nasugbu, Batangas, previously owned by failed banker Jose Go, forcing the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to declare a failed bid and pave the way for a negotiated sale.

Except for the legal counsel of Evercrest Golf Club and Resort Corp., no one seemed interested in a property whose assessed value had been raised to P1.7 billion from only P1.2 billion just prior to the bidding process.

According to bidding committee chairman Pedro P. Tordilla Jr., the bidding started promptly at 10am but only the Evercrest lawyer showed up.

Evercrest has protested the sale of the property in a case filed before the Court of Appeals in August 2009 and asking the court to support its petition for certiorari and the issuance of a restraining order against the BSP.

This was the same property Orient Commercial Banking Corp. used to secure a  P5-billion emergency loan from the BSP that year as its frenetic activities in the real estate sector was hit hard by the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

“Evercrest was there to observe but cannot do anything because the bidding was a failure. It was just there to observe,” Tordilla said.

He said the Asset Management Department at the BSP will report to the policy-making Monetary Board to set off proceedings for a negotiated sale.

The BSP is expected to write interested parties such as Robinson’s Land

Corp. which earlier indicated interest in the property but eventually refused to submit bids for themselves.

Tordilla said there have been others also indicating interest in the Nasugbu property but could not recall them off the top of his head.

In any case, Tordilla said the bidding committee raised the floor price of the property by some P500 million to P1.7 billion answer for BSP expenses since Evercrest was consolidated as one of its assets in 1999.