Laguna heeds one-town, one-product call

“We must open up economic opportunities, maintain socio-political stability, and promote good stewardship to ensure a better quality of life for all our citizens. We will focus on strategic measures and activities that will spur economic growth and create jobs,” President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said during the Laguna Business and Investment Expo (LBIX) held recently in Laguna.

President Arroyo showed her full support of the agro-industrial and business initiatives of the province.

LBIX was in line with the administration’s medium-term Philippine development program.

Among the highlights of the weeklong expo was the showcase of the various specialty products of Laguna’s different towns.

In 2005, Laguna’s One-Town One-Product program was established, which served as a catalyst for the province’s small- and medium-sized businesses.

“Our cottage industries are the backbone of our economy,” says entrepreneur Dennis Lazaro, Laguna’s provincial administrator. “These industries mirror the individual hopes and aspirations of our entrepreneurs like Perla Dizon Escaba, owner of Escaba Food Products.”

A teacher by profession, Perla was challenged by her husband Rodolfo to go into food processing. In 1978, she established Escaba Food Products, which offers bottled fruit preserves and sweets, with only P30,000 capital in her own backyard in Barangay Concepcion, San Pablo City. She had only two workers.

Thirty years later, the business now sits on a three-hectare Agro-Industrial Eco-Facility that sports a food-processing plant, a warehouse with a capacity for 10 tons of bottled fruit preserves, agricultural areas that provide the processing plant with its fruits and an aviary of lovebirds. Roughly 50 to 60 percent of their total production is exported to the US and the Middle East. They also have one direct export market in Canada, which Perla tapped at the Asian Ethnic Food Fest.

Escaba Food Products’ staff now consists of 65 skilled workers, and the opening capital of P1,000 has ballooned into assets of P10 million.

Escaba Food Products is proof that a business with humble beginnings can become a globally competitive company with the support of the local government.

“Laguna is among the top provinces in the country and we are considered the premier location for investment, a thriving center of industry, an emerging center for learning, a catalyst for agricultural growth and productivity. Through LBIX, we were able to communicate to the nation and to the global community that even in the midst of global crisis, the Laguneños see great opportunities and boundless possibilities in the province of Laguna,” Lazaro said.