THE ongoing verbal tussle between the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) and SM Prime Holdings Inc., owner of the SM malls, should not have happened at all were the dispute put in its proper perspective. For it appears that the SM Aura Premier, which is the mall brand’s entry into high fashion, is being caught in the crossfire between the BCDA, on one hand, and the Taguig City government, on the other.

BCDA Chairman Arnel Casanova, it would seem, is bent on frustrating the efforts of taipan Henry Sy’s new mall operations to open an access point for the mall because of what he perceives as the “changes” in the land-use plan for the site. The problem, however, is that the BCDA no longer holds any legal anchor on the issue since it donated the land to Taguig City, which then bidded out the area and was won by SM Prime Holdings, the listed property stock of the Sys.

Thus, the issue, if ever, should be between the BCDA and Taguig City and should not extend to the property-development plan that SM Prime did, investing P3.5 billion in the process, after winning the bidding for that prime lot. The mall, which had Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker inaugurating it on Thursday, is the Sy group’s entry point for a mall that would have concept stores of new global brands, a clear departure from its crowded malls evidenced by SM City and SM Megamall.

The three-story, 5,590-square-meter store that was designed by New York firm Point Design boasts of an upscale look and understated elegance via lighting that is much different from the colorful graphics and wall and ceiling treatments in typical SM stores. The mall, which is situated right smack in Ayala Land’s Market! Market! and Serendra and Bonifacio High Street in Taguig, is apparently the mall chain’s answer to the Ayala conglomerate’s high fashion sense.

We understand that the title to the lot that was donated to Taguig did not have any lien or encumbrance whatsoever that is now being raised by the BCDA. So all that fuss about the BCDA insisting that there should be no mall erected in what used to be its property should not carry any weight at all. Imagine having a property development bidded out by a donee (Taguig City) and after a company wins the bidding and proceeded  to erect a mall, the donor of the land (BCDA), would suddenly throw questions about the development when the donor no longer has any lien to the property.

That is what the BCDA is insisting on and rightfully what Taguig City is questioning and yet, in the matter that should clearly be an issue between the two government entities, SM Prime is being unduly punished for something that it should not be a party to. Taguig as the rightful owner should be allowed to develop the property that it sees fit and it should not allow the BCDA to wreak havoc within its property line. 

Unfortunately, that is what is happening within the premises of the SM Aura Premier, with the BCDA throwing a monkey wrench into each point of the construction process, notably the access road that SM wanted to put up and for which Taguig City has issued a notice to proceed. If the BCDA feels aggrieved, then it should not let SM Premier suffer. After all, SM was just the winning bidder for the leasehold on the property that Taguig City now owns.

The BCDA action stopping the construction of the access road from where buena de familia from Forbes Park and Dasmariñas Village can reach SM’s upscale mall may unwittingly open a Pandora’s box on the state of investment affairs in the country. Having earned investment-grade status from foreign rating agencies, the Philippines’s magnet for new investments may suffer as a result of the BCDA’s belligerent insistence that it should have a voice in the development of a property that it had already donated and for which it has lost property rights.

So far, the changes in the investment rules of the country have been hurting our golden chance to better the lot of our people. Some Japanese investors and even the European Chamber of Commerce have been voicing their grievances over the rule changes that happen sometimes in the middle of a game. What the government should do is annotate the many problems that have arisen from the perceptual weakness of the game rules here.

Should it do an analytics on the changes that have bedeviled our investment prospects, it would find out that the sudden changing of rules is the biggest obstacle that foreign investors have cited in skipping the Philippines and proceeding instead to Vietnam or Myanmar.