M’danao is RP’s best bet in export mart

Mindanao is the country’s most competitive area in the Philippines and holds the potential of beating both Luzon and the Visayas in the export market.

Thus stated Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport) and PCCI president Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis Jr. during the 3rd Mindanao Shippers’ Conference held in Cagayan de Oro City recently.

"Compared to other big regions in the country, Mindanao is the most competitive in the export market," the export leader pointed out. "You have the potentials of turning the tables on Luzon and Visayas as the exporting center of the country."

Mindanao’s best bets are food products from fruits to tuna.

"For one, you have wide areas of fertile lands for wide-scale plantation farming. Two, you are uniquely situated because Mindanao is not battered by yearly typhoons, unlike the Visayas and Luzon. Besides, most parts of Mindanao are blessed with year-round rainfall. And third, the Sulu Sea is the natural spawning ground for tuna, making Mindanao the natural route of year-round tuna runs."

He further pointed out that basic support infrastructure including communications systems, highways and ports are being built in the area.

Another key factor that Mindanao can rely on is its cheap power rates that are below average rates in Asia, while power rates in Luzon and the Visayas are as high as those in Tokyo.

Producers in Mindanao can likewise by-pass expensive domestic shipping costs if they ship their export cargoes straight to their markets, instead of routing these through the international seaports in Cebu and Manila.

It was in consideration of these factors, Ortiz-Luis added, that the Export Development Council (EDC) made Central Mindanao the pilot site of the first food industry cluster in the Philippines way back in 1999.

Due to the impressive successes of all the pilot industry clusters, the EDC has adopted industry clustering as a development strategy for the 21st century.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has likewise adopted the same strategy beginning this year to rev up the domestic-oriented industries, Ortiz-Luis told the Mindanaoans.

He urged the Mindanao entrepreneurs to continue putting their best in their regional economy by going into new business ventures or expanding their present capacities, instead of waiting for foreign investments that have gone down to trickles in the past few years. – Abe P. Belena, Philexport News and Features