Boomtown

GENERAL SANTOS CITY— It did seem the hills on the eastern side of Saranggani Bay were afire Tuesday evening. The locals thought so too.

Moments later, we realized what was going on. Just as the sun was setting westward on a cloudless sky, the full moon was rising from the east. As the moon moved up from the horizon, with a bright red-orange tinge, it did seem wildfire had broken out on the ridge of Saranggani hills across the placid bay.

It was such a splendid sight, right smack in the middle of the city’s tuna festival. The next day, we went back to wait for the sun to set and the moon to rise right across from it. But there were clouds Wednesday evening and the spectacle did not recur.

This was, it turns out, a rare conjuncture. We were happy to have witnessed it when it happened.  

The other spectacle was the city itself. It was blossoming rapidly, a boomtown riding the crest of tuna exports.

I frequented Gensan from 2001 to 2010, checking on development projects. Even then, the pace of things quickened by the day. I did not, however, expect the city it has become today: a nexus of trade, a food basket, a community of bold entrepreneurs moving investments to as far as Papua, New Guinea.

This is no longer the frontier town it was just a short while ago. It is now a melting pot of migrants willing to work hard and win big. Everyone I met the past few days traced their roots elsewhere: from Pampanga and the Ilocos provinces, from Iloilo and Cebu.

Some comparison might be drawn between Gensan and Shenzen. Both are thriving cities goaded into being by the foresight of political leaders.

When Ramos was President, he poured infra projects into the area, fully expecting the economic blossoming we see now. His agriculture secretary Sonny Dominguez moved heaven and earth to find the wherewithal to build the port. Taking the cue from public policy, financing flowed to support the investments that made Gensan into what it is now.

Young as this city might be, it is due for reinvention.

The tuna trade has hit its limits. It is now wiser for the businessmen here to invest in canneries and fish processing in Papua, closer to the sources of fish. Gensan can no longer be only about tuna. It must look into becoming a center of education for the region, a food basket for the country and, perhaps, even a tourism magnet like Camsur has become.

The sage Marfenio Tan, the man who opened possibilities for tuna processing for export, understands this. Ronnel Rivera, scion of the largest fishing outfit in the area and now city mayor, is a progressive and forward-looking local leader.

Between these two, and many other entrepreneurs we conversed with, we can say with confidence that Gensan will soon become a city larger than just the tuna industry — surely more than just the apparent wildfire in the hills.

Hindrance

The other possible boomtown on the horizon is the Clark economic zone. The single most important possible driver of the boom is the $3 billion infra and logistics center committed by Global Gateway Development Corporation.

Global Gateway is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kuwaiti private equity investment company KGL. It leased a 177-hectare portion of Clark with the intention of building a world-class manufacturing and logistics facility that could open employment for tens of thousands of Filipinos. By the end of this year, the first structure in this complex, the 150-bed Medical City Clark, is due to be operational by year-end.

The timeline for the completion of this immense logistics facility might be delayed, however, by problems that cropped up between Global Gateway and Peregrine Development Corporation.

Global Gateway, which owns the facility and sunk in $100 million into the project, engaged Peregrine to oversee construction work by way of an engineering, procurement and management agreement. Peregrine is basically a shell company registered in the Virgin Islands with no record of large engineering projects.

Earlier this year, Global Gateway terminated its contract with Peregrine for a long list of breaches. This include: diversion of Global Gateway funds to unrelated uses; failure to comply with applicable laws which materially affected the project’s implementation; failure to faithfully observe the procurement and bidding procedures to ensure competitive bidding; and, willfully committing acts inimical and adverse to the best interests of Global Gateway.

Even if the contract between Global Gateway and Peregrine stipulated that any disagreement between the two entities will be settled in the international arbitral court in Singapore, the latter sought (and won) a TRO from the Pampanga regional trial court to prevent termination of the contract. This was earlier this year.

Last June, however, the Court of Appeals ruled against the TRO issued by the lower court. Notwithstanding the fact it had lost legal standing, Peregrine barricaded the premises of the facility with its army of security guards, threatening to hinder further work on this massive project.

Peregrine found the audacity to do that, according to locals, because it had cultivated close relations with some very high officials in the PNP.  This is a matter that needs some looking into.

At any rate, the problems Peregrine is creating for the Global Gateway could delay the next tranche of investments amounting to about $150 million. The BCDA, as usual, has been of little help in clearing the way forward for this massive and strategically important project.

If this project is somehow aborted, it will be a major loss for our entire economy. Global Gateway might be the Gensan that never was.