The Davao region’s resilience, safety and security are the key factors that continue to attract investments in the region.
Department of Trade and Industry Region XI Director Ma. Belenda Q. Ambi said on Wednesday during a media forum at Habi at Kape that the fact that the President comes from Davao City was also a factor.
The regional director attributed the surge in investments to the efforts and strategies of the agency to promote the region by coordinating with private sectors as well as the local government units’ investment promotion centers.
“We are considering the local government units as the ambassadors of their respective areas, and for Davao Region we have really strong investment centers,” said Ambi.
“To name a few, we have the Davao City Investment Promotions Center… investment promotion center in Davao del Norte, in Davao del Sur. Right now Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley are now starting with their promotion centers,” she added.
Ambi reported that investments in the region in 2016 increased by 63% as she explained that in 2015, DTI recorded a total investment of PhP4 billion. Meanwhile, it has increased to PhP7 billion in 2016.
In a data given by Board of Investments (BOI)-Davao a total of P7,684.69 million was invested in the region as of October 2016, higher than the 2015 total investment of P4,708.14 million.
“Among the sectors that figured out most is on manufacturing, transportation and storage (this is logistics), accommodation and food service projects, electricity, and then real estate activities, agriculture, forestry,” said Ambi.
“The three main (industries) are manufacturing, real estate and transportation,” she added.
For sectoral breakdown, manufacturing comprises 38 percent of the total investments followed by transportation & storage at 31 percent, real estate activities at 13 percent, accommodation & food service activities at 7 percent; electricity, gas, steam & air conditioning supply at 7 percent; and agriculture, forestry & fishing at 4 percent.
For the regional breakdown, Davao City recorded the highest investment with P2.5 billion or 33 percent of the total investment followed by Davao del Sur with P2.2 billion or 29 percent and Davao del Norte as third highest with P2.06 billion or 27 percent. The rest of the bulk comes from Compostela Valley, Davao Oriental and Davao Occidental respectively.
San Miguel Foods, Inc. (Davao del Sur) from the manufacturing cluster recorded the highest investment of P2.2 billion which generated 307 jobs followed by Davao International Container Terminal, Inc. (Davao del Norte) from transportation & storage cluster with P1.9 billion, Damosa Land, Inc. (Davao City) of the real estate activities cluster with P596.59 million, FTC Group of Companies Corporation (Davao City) of the accommodation & food service activities cluster with P540.97 million, Euro Hydro Power (Asia) Holdings, Inc. (Compostela Valley) of the electricity, gas, steam & air conditioning supply cluster with P517.77 million, PNX Chelsea Shipping Corporation (Davao City) of transportation & storage cluster with P507.60 million, AVLB ASIA PACIFIC Conglomerate, Inc. (Davao City) of manufacturing cluster with P500.00 million, Grupo San Pedro Realty Corporation (Davao City) of real estate activities cluster with P372.10 million, Anflo Banana Corporation (Davao Oriental) of agriculture, forestry & fishing cluster with P342.00 million, and Cocohaus Corporation (Davao del Norte) of manufacturing cluster with P177.50 million of investments.
