THE Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (DCCCII) and the Mindanao Development Authority (Minda) are set to conduct a trade mission to Manado, Indonesia sometime in August to talk about trade activities involving the Davao-Gensan-Bitung Roro.
"This is part of the effort to finalize arrangements with Indonesian counterparts for trade activities that will make use of the Davao-Gensan-Bitung Roro," said Minda Assistant Secretary Deputy Executive Director Romeo Montenegro during the weekly press conference at Habi at Kape, Abreeza Ayala Malls last Wednesday.
All the delegates of the trade mission are going to be from Mindanao. He said if the number of the delegates reaches to about 50 to 60, they are looking into the possibility of having a charter flight by Philippine Airlines or Cebu Pacific.
Montenegro said since the launching of the project in Davao last April 30, the volume of the goods coming from Mindanao outbound to North Sulawesi has yet to be completed. However he said, the backload, or the goods from North Sulawesi to Mindanao had already been readied and have specific agreements for sourcing out.
He said the challenge they had faced is the big volume vessel, which has a capacity of 500 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU).
"If we had been able to tap, let's say, 100 TEU-capacity vessel then definitely, movement might have been continuous. If we only have a certain percent of cargo loaded, not entirely filling up an entire 100 TEU vessel, financial cost will not be that big. But for such a big vessel, we have a bigger space to fill in," Montenegro said, adding that usage of other vessels for the project is being explored.
They are considering to use the Super Shuttle, which is smaller in volume-capacity, not necessarily Roro, and conventional in order to serve the route.
"This is to be able to serve the route up until such time that we are able to see peak up of cargo and then transition to already deploying big volume vessels," said Montenegro.
"Definitely, these kinds of projects are destined to peak up at a certain period so long as the necessary complementary activities are also being undertaken," he added.
