The real estate company is also planning large housing developments in nearby Cavite and Laguna provinces, where it has 575 ha of land. A construction frenzy is changing its skyline. Raul Concepcion, chairman of Concepcion Industries, the country's largest airconditioner maker, counts about 40 buildings of 40 stories or so being built in Makati and outlying areas. His salesmen are busy trying to win contracts to cool many of them. One and a half years after President Fidel Ramos ended the country's daily power interruptions, the Philippine economy has rebounded - and lifted property values along with it.
Manila now boasts one of the hottest property markets in Asia.
Critics at the time sniffed the winning bid was excessive, but Metro Pacific, a subsidiary of Hong Kong's First Pacific, and its partners may have the last laugh. Growth in prices has been way above expectations. In 1986 the fall of the Marcos regime sparked a surge in property and stock values, but it all ended with the bloody December 1989 coup attempt. Then in the next four years, the Philippines was hobbled by an earthquake, the Mount Pinatubo eruption, the closure of U.S. military bases, and a growth-sapping shortage in electricity. All that has changed with the government's fast-track power projects.