Five of the Philippines’ top property developers can take part in a state auction for a former airport site in Iloilo city, 290 miles (470 km) south of the capital, the government said on Tuesday. 

Ayala Land , the country’s top real estate firm, SM Prime Holdings , the largest mall developer, Robinsons Land Corp. , Empire East Land Holdings and Rockwell Land, a unit of Benpres Holdings , are all eligible to participate in bidding for the 54-hectare site.

‘We are very pleased with the interest in the Iloilo airport property and look forward to a successful bid on April 24,’ Finance Undersecretary John Sevilla said in a statement. The government declined to give the value of the property or the floor price for the bidding. 

The Philippines previously said it expected total proceeds from the sale of state assets this year to rise to 25.7 billion pesos (3 million), junking an earlier target of just 500 million pesos. 

The government earned 5.8 billion pesos from asset sales in 2006.  The higher 2007 target was largely due to the sale of a minority stake in the country’s biggest listed firm Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) to Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co Ltd. for 25.2 billion pesos in February. 

The PLDT sale was the government’s biggest privatisation deal in over a decade and has put the Philippines on track to meet its budget deficit target of 63 billion pesos or 0.9 percent of gross domestic product this year. 

The government had a fiscal shortfall of 62.2 billion pesos last year, about half of its goal, mainly due to lower-than-expected spending.  As of the first two months of the year, the government had a budget deficit of 18.6 billion pesos, just 40 percent of its first-quarter shortfall goal.