Fresh bananas remain the top export commodity of Southern Mindanao or Davao Region for the first three quarters of 2009 despite the challenges faced by the banana industry due to the unresolved issue on aerial spraying particularly in Davao City.
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) regional director Maria Lourdes D. Lim said Davao Region continues to enjoy favorable trade with its major global trading partners as it registered higher value of exports at $ 544 million.
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Philippine stocks will rally after the presidential elections in May as the market enters a “feel good” phase of the new government, Macquarie Group Ltd. said.
Macquarie named Ayala Land Inc. as an example of stocks that “are just too good to pass up, and are worth owning even through the current volatility,” according to a research report released today. SM Prime Holdings Inc. will also benefit from election spending, according to the report.
Central banks in Indonesia and the Philippines intervened on Friday to support their sliding currencies as the US dollar rose on jitters about sovereign debt problems in Europe, traders said.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo Wednesday hailed the country?s cyber industry as a strategic success and said whoever will succeed her in June should build upon what her administration has achieved in the industry to bring the Philippines to the verge of the first world in 20 years.
Call center Concentrix Philippines, a unit of the US-based Synnex Corp., is expanding, citing the city’s pool of skilled manpower.
The company, which has 600 seats at the Damosa Information Technology Complex, is looking at increasing its work force to 1,400 this year, said Gerardo S. Dumael, site director, before the visit of President Arroyo Wednesday night as part of her “cyber corridor tour.”
At least 10 new business ventures under Davao City government’s preferred investment areas is expected to generate 2,360 jobs. The new projects are in the fields of agro-processing, property development, tourism and transshipment facilities with investments worth at least P5 billion.
This was bared in the 2009 report of its annual accomplishment by the city planning and development office (CPDO).
The banana industry may be Davao City’s primary advantage when it comes to the international market, but the city is set to lose this competitiveness, no thanks to the continuous efforts to ban aerial spraying.
“The private sector has very little time to prepare since the time the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area has been publicized and given the attention it deserves but we have an advantage since we have very good export products like banana,” former Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. president Simeon Marfori said.
Marfori said free trade will merely open up the market such that our products will be faced with a lot of competition in terms of quality and price. Davao City is no stranger to this, he said, since we already export our banana and other products to the world market and we are also faced with competition there.
THE Philippines can expect to feel birth pains from the full implementation of the Asean-China Free Trade Area, or ACFTA, which took effect last January 1. But the business sector of Davao City is confident that it will benefit from the agreement in the long term.
