Manila Water 2007 income rises to P2.4B

Ayala-led Manila Water Co. on Thursday disclosed that its net income marginally improved to P2.409 billion in 2007 from the previous year's P2.394 billion. In a statement sent to the media, the company said the slight increase was made even with the expiration of its tax holiday and payment of P808 million in income taxes for 2007. “Manila Water’s performance was a result of our aggressive capital investments over the past years, leading to significant improvements in billed volume and operational efficiencies. We sustained our high level of capital expenditures and concession fees at around P4.7 billion in 2007, which thus brings our total investments in the East Zone to around P28 billion to date“, said Antonino Aquino, Manila Water president. The company said it plans to increase capital investments with a P187-billion service improvement plan over 15 years, P37 billion of which will be spent within the next five years alone. Manila Water also announced that it has surpassed the 1 billion liter per day mark in water volume sales as it continued to increase its number of customers to 986,000 households in 2007, from 325,000 in 1997. System loss, or non revenue water, also decreased to the 24 percent level by year-end, Manila Water said. - GMANews.TV