DAVAO City is bent on a challenge which is to have more manufacturing hubs accredited by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) here.
Davao City Investment Promotion Center (DCIPC) officer-in-charge Lemuel Ortonio said this will push the economic growth of the city and will further position Davao City as a sustainable development economy.
"Our move on this is to talk to property owners, tell them, encourage them, about the benefits of industrial parks," he said.
He also said that it will be ideal if the manufacturing hubs will be established near the agriculture production areas.
Ortonio said that investments in manufacturing industry are also prioritized by the City Government.
In a previous interview, Ivan Cortez, former DCIPC officer-in-charge now the head of the City Planning and Development Office (CPDO) also said that sustainable economic growth can be also achieved in manufacturing industry.
In 2015, of the total investments in the city, only about 5 percent is in manufacturing. Of the 34,000 issued business permits in Davao City, last year, only 2,000 are into manufacturing mostly light to medium manufacturing firms.
Cortez said if the city will be a manufacturing belt in Mindanao, with all the raw materials going here for value adding, growth will be sustained.
He added that as the city is eyeing locations for investments in the manufacturing sector, the challenge is how to facilitate the entry of these.
The manufacturing industry contributed a total of P 174.3 million, around 12 percent of the total new investment for the first semester at P1.4 billion of new investments poured in Davao region during the first semester of 2015 based on Davao Region Economic Performance and Update for first the semester of 2015 prepared by the Board of Investments-Davao Extension Office.
Under the manufacturing industry, the Starbridge Global Corp. poured some P169.2 million, while the Consolidated Plywood Industries Inc. contributed P5 million.
Ortonio also said that last week, a foreign manufacturing plant company presented its investment proposal to DCIPC however status of the investment is at stake as the company's operations will have a mining component.
