Business chamber leaves CEDZ fate to lawmakers

CEBU, Philippines - While Cebu’s bid for a province-wide economic zone remains pending in Congress, the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) decided to shift its focus towards encouraging the private sector to invest in developing economic zones.

CCCI president Lito Maderaso said while House Bill 1319 (Cebu Economic Development Zone), creating the Cebu Special Ecozone and Free Port, has gained so much resistance, they will leave its fate to the lawmakers and instead focus on existing ecozone projects.

“Now, the private sector cannot insist on what it wants, if there is so much political doubt on it. We will leave the fate of the CEDZ proposal to the law makers. Meanwhile, we will try to convince those that have money to invest in economic zone development,” Maderaso said.

The CEDZ is envisioned to be a paradigm of an effective and functioning public-private partnership with the private sector taking the lead and government providing infrastructure and institutional support and contributing part of the needed resources.

The bill, which was initiated by the CCCI and supported by Cebuano congressmen, had already passed through the House's economic affairs committee some four years ago.

It was authored by all the eight congressmen from Cebu and is jointly supported by local business groups.

Maderaso said while Cebu is waiting for the bill to be passed into law, which is expected to take time, the chamber now is gearing towards encouraging developers to invest on ecozone projects, as Cebu needs to boost its manufacturing side.

“We would rather encourage private developers that will create economic zones. Ours in Cebu are almost full,” the new chamber president said, calling the attention of AboitizLand Inc., the developer of MEZ-2, to build another economic zone here.

“We need manufacturing to aid our growth in BPO, tourism. We can’t continue to soar in ‘one leg’. Manufacturing is the key to have a balanced economic growth,” said Maderaso.

Now that CCCI is holding a month-long Cebu Business Month (CBM 2013) dubbed “Excite Cebu,” promotion on putting up economic zone developers is one of the attractions to be highlighted.

Likewise, he said the chamber will also put on its aggressive advocacy on encouraging local manufacturers to be globally competitive and invest on expansions so that Filipinos will not depend largely on imported products.

“Pro-Pinoy” advocacy urging consumers to patronize Philippine-made products, rather than imported ones, will also be one of the focuses that the chamber will work on. Maderaso mentioned Thailand, a country that has a local-led manufacturing sector, as an example.

In a separate interview earlier with Cebu Investment and Promotions Center (CIPC) managing director Joel Mari S. Yu, he believes that the national government will not allow the House proposal to materialize, because it will become a very big “revenue risk.”

According to Yu, the proposal is very good for Cebu, specifically that the multinational firms in the manufacturing sector are now looking at the Philippines again, as their alternative investment destination, but pushing the CEDZ  bid may be a waste of time.

“The chances of it happening are very low. If the national government should do it, it would not be in Cebu. They will do it in a depressed province, rather than Cebu,” said Yu.

However, he said Cebu doesn’t need to push for the approval of the CEDZ to make it more attractive to investments, especially to light manufacturing sector, as it can lure investors regardless of the existence of the law, but it has to solve the problem of infrastructure, high power cost and bureaucracy.

“It’s not true that the way to bring in investments is through incentives, but through improving the environment of doing business,” Yu said.

In the meantime, as Cebu lacks the availability of vacant economic zones to host interested investors, PEZA’s requirement of five-hectare ecozone development could solve the problem, just like what Mitsumi in Danao City is doing. /JMD (FREEMAN)