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DAVAO CITY—The
country’s power rate and real-estate cost are the common
subjects of whining from foreign investors, although
most of them end up still putting up their businesses
here, the Board of Investments (BOI) said.
The
complaints were due to comparisons with other preferred
investment sites in Asia and one in Latin America, said
Gil Dureza, chief of the BOI’s Mindanao extension
office.
In the
various inquiries that companies made in his office,
Dureza said that ”they usually ask the usual questions
on the power rate, manpower, cost of doing business,
land and buildings.”
He said
investors often balked at the rate that electric
companies charge, not only in Mindanao, but in the rest
of the country as well.
The same
objection was being raised on both the cost of real
estate and in the cost of doing business, comprising the
triple whammy of hesitation among foreign prospectors.
“That
would make them consider Indonesia, Korea and even
Brazil as other prospective sites,” he said.
His
office covers the southern, central and western regions
and Dureza said that in many instances though,
“companies would move away from the major cities to seek
less expensive real-estate costs”.
The
prime cities in Mindanao like Davao, Cagayan de Oro,
Cotabato and Zamboanga remain as preferred sites of
major businesses though.
But on
the list this year of new ventures or business
expansion, cities like Panabo and Tagum in Davao del
Norte, Kidapawan in North Cotabato and even the
provinces of Sarangani, Compostela Valley and
Maguindanao have benefited from business decisions
veering away from the prime cities.
In the
case of one business by a Korean investor, Yoo Chang
Corp., it has chosen Davao del Sur to put up its coconut
peat and fiber processing venture worth P7 million.
“Before
it decided, it went into some pilot activities trying to
find out how well the other areas could help supply the
company with the needed coconuts,” Dureza said.
He said
that the company would put up two other companies in
Indonesia and Brazil.
The BOI
listed P3.9 billion in new investments by September this
year, with P491.94 million more in the pipeline to be
registered by November this year, and another P17.592
billion to be likely invested anytime beginning the
first quarter of next year.
Meanwhile, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
said that more businesses have shown interest in doing
business in the region.
The
business name registration, one of the indicators of the
business climate, filed from January to September this
year, already surpassed the record of the whole year
last year.
There
were 4,530 registrants last year, and for the first nine
months of this year, the number was surpassed with 4,810
registrants.
Lou
Pasawa, DTI head of its Davao City Field Office, said
that an industry cluster monitoring also indicated that
the region already got P449 million in more investments
in mining and another P10 million in the wood industry.
Pasawa
did not give any breakdown of the figures and said the
figure was reported during a meeting on Monday of the
heads and representatives of the different industry
clusters in the region. |
