To complete its P18-billion steel section mill project in Lemery, Batangas, SteelAsia Manufacturing Corporation announced that it has secured an P8.3-billion loan from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) and Philippine Business Bank (PBB).

“Steel is an investment priority of the Marcos administration. Because of this loan from GSIS and DBP, and the ever-supportive PBB, we are finally on our way to having a Philippine steel industry,” said Benjamin Yao, SteelAsia chairperson and CEO.

Yao said its Lemery plant will be the country’s first steel sections mill.

“It will be fully commissioned in 2025 and will substitute the importation of steel sections products like H-beams, I-beams, and angle bars that are used for infrastructure like bridges, railways, high-rises, industrial buildings, telco towers and transmission towers,” Yao added.

Vision for domestic industry

The mill will be the company’s seventh plant, the others being rebar producers. Apart from rebar, the Philippines imports over 80 percent of its steel requirements.

Yao’s vision is for the “Philippines to have a steel industry.”

He said he anticipates that with a robust local steel industry, construction costs would go down and create new manufacturing industries, along with tens of thousands of jobs.

The loan agreement signing was held at the head office of GSIS in Pasay City last week. The lenders were represented by GSIS president and GM Arnulfo “Wick” Veloso, DBP president Michael de Jesus, and PBB president and CEO Rolando Avante.