(Photo: Rey Baniquet/PPD)
DAVAO CITY – The Bureau of Investments (BOI) is in a daze for a sudden rush in the number of businesses wanting to locate in Mindanao, particularly Davao with investment leads now amounting to a staggering P886.7 billion as of Monday.
This was disclosed by Gil Dureza of BOI in Mindanao, noting that the rush of investors started during the election period, but the surge was more notable after the polls. He said that for the month of June alone, Mindanao registered P799.81-billion investment leads.
Of the total investment leads in Mindanao, Davao City cornered P6.3 billion, Dureza revealed.
This year, the BOI report showed that Mindanao investments leads in January captured P88 billion; February, P9.312 billion; March, P2.07 billion; April, P5.922 billion; and May, P1.645 billion.
“We have not experienced this phenomenon before. The prospect of…yung negosyong pumapasok before nasa (the investments coming in before was within) 10 to 12 million,” Dureza said during Monday’s “Kapehan sa Dabaw” forum at SM City Annex.
Dureza said the (President Rodrigo) Duterte factor triggered a lot of interests of the investors to Mindanao and Davao. “Malaking (Big) factor. Duterte projected transformation and that provided a signal to the level of confidence,” Dureza said.
He also said that during the last few weeks, they entertain two to three foreign investors per day. “Our office is overheating and we don’t find ourselves resting this time anymore,” he added.
Even on a Sunday, they still entertain foreign investors who want to set up regional offices in Mindanao, Davao in particular, Dureza said.
Among the prospect areas of interest are: Public Private Partnership (P39 billion); Manufacturing particularly petrochemical and steel integrated steel (P742 billion); mass housing (P510 million; infrastructure particularly port development (P3 billion); power generation (P49 billion) and resource-based agri (P33 billion).
Dureza noted that investments are regularly moving up the last five years.
A 2010-2016 BOI-approved investments in Mindanao registered P11.785 billion in 2010; P91.42 billion in 2011; P25.04 billion in 2012; P109.401 in 2013; P69.358 billion in 2014; and P25.810 billion in 2015.
As this developed, Dureza said they also see the need to level up their services by drawing up a plan to cope with the increasing number of investors visiting BOI especially that he has only five staff to handle investors in Mindanao.
Dureza added they are also working on streamlining the procedures in line with President Duterte’s policy of cutting red tape in government to encourage more investments in the country.