‘Time to reimagine VisMin’

Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines launches all-inclusive investment and business guides in the fastest-growing cities in the Visayas and Mindanao.

MANILA, Philippines - These investment guides tell readers about the culture of each place, its demographics, its top industries, tourist destinations, planned infrastructure and reimagining what’s possible.

Catching the attention and confidence of potential investors is easy in Metro Manila and nearby areas, which contribute half of the country’s GDP. But for provincial cities down south, prior to presenting business highlights and trade and investment figures, a trickier but valuable approach is to present themselves the best way Filipinos do — to be warm and welcoming.

This means capturing the investors’ heart through hospitality and tourism, says Isla Lipana & Co./PwC Philippines chairman and senior partner Atty. Alex Cabrera. Zeroing in six VisMin cities with growth rates of six to nine percent — Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Davao, General Santos and Iloilo, the company recently launched an exhaustive investment guide titled Reimagining VisMin with emphasis on local travel and people.

“The investment guide is meant to bring awareness. It’s like a tourist spot. When you promote it, people come and economic activities follow. The guide also includes tourist spots in the cities, so you know what’s good about that place. It will give some confidence to prospective investors, catching their attention to go there,” quips Cabrera.

Normally, an investment guideline provides the socio-demographic details, list of main roads and other infrastructure, Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP), trade and investment, incentives to qualified investors, and the likes.

PwC’s 20-page quick and easy-to-read guides capture and examine the places with a fresh perspective, each capped with a “reimagined” image of the city’s flourishing future.

“Our investment guide is about the place, the aspirations of its people and the few things that you can say very strongly about the place. There’s even a preamble,” says Cabrera, taking pride at how his team — despite the accounting and taxation hats — observed, analyzed, researched, wrote and published the guides on their own, based on PwC experience.

“We sat on it and we thought of the unique things about the places and areas of investment and, most importantly, imagined what is possible for those places. So, that’s a distinct station in the book — about reimagining what is possible in that place.”

Each title introduces a theme that is very relevant to the city. Creative Cebu gives accolades to entrepreneurs who empower the city despite its limited natural resources. Dauntless Davao highlights the prime value of maintaining peace and order. Burgeoning Bacolod means the surge of the city despite its reliance on sugar, its prime commodity. Inspiring Iloilo, for the inspiring leadership in private-public partnership, which is bringing in commercial centers and industrial zones through a “green city” approach. The title, CDO, City of Awe, simply for CDO being a beautiful city, which made it into the Philippine Gems finalists — another PwC campaign. Lastly, Get into GenSan invites investors to General Santos’ priced tuna industry, which could further raise the city’s 5.7-percent growth rate.

“We focus on these six cities because people or investors won’t focus on VisMin. So, we bring them these investment guides to show them what’s really going on in the areas, how much they’ve grown, what’s the culture there, what are the people like, what are the industries like and what are the areas for investment. Regionalization is national expansion. It’s not dispersing activities from Luzon to Visayas and Mindanao; it is expanding within the country,” says Cabrera.

Today, the company makes Reimagining VisMin downloadable for the public, and may be printed and replicated by the subject city governments.