On green Econ development: Expert to orient tourism players of Cebu, Bohol

CEBU, Philippines - An expert on environmental and climate issues, Nadine Boss will be in Cebu today and tomorrow to orient the stakeholders of the tourism sector in Cebu and Bohol, competing head on and enhancing competitiveness advantage.

A Monitoring and Re-planning Meeting (MRM) will be started today at Quest Hotel, as part of the ProGED Project or the Promotion of Green Economic Development (ProGED) series of activities to help the tourism value chain in both province to achieve greener value chain and operational system.

ProGED is a joint undertaking by the Republic of the Philippines through the Department of Trade and Industry and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) focusing initially on the tourism sector with its high potential for investment, employment poverty reduction due to its linkages with upstream and downstream industries in other economic sectors.

Boss, an expert deployed by GIZ, will share her experiences in pursuing green economic development in China.  Participants will get various international learning visits and events will also share their insights and lessons learned that can be contextualized to the Philippine setting.

The MRM is also an opportunity for the key players in the tourism sector of Bohol, health and wellness tourism sub-sector of Cebu to establish business linkages and for the tourism businesses to network and link with the regional and national institutions promoting MSME competitiveness and development of the tourism sector in the country.

Organizers said the MRM is not only a venue for project implementers and beneficiaries to discuss common goals and aims, clarify how to go about achieving them, identify whom to work with and organize the proper structure to achieve common goals but it is also a venue to understand more the importance of micro, small and medium enterprises in the economic development of the country-- how these MSMEs can be enhanced by adopting climate smart and environment friendly practices and what push, pull and enabling strategies the support institutions can employ to facilitate the adoption of greening strategies.

The project objective reads: MSMEs as well as government institutions relevant to economic development increasingly implement environmental friendly, climate smart and inclusive strategies and measures.

As a federally owned enterprise, GIZ supports the German Government in achieving its objectives in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development. /JMD (FREEMAN)