MinBC: Economic boost to continue in 2018

THE Mindanao Business Council (MinBC) sees good potential for the tourism, agribusiness, and the construction industry in 2018.

Despite the travel advisories released in United States and other European countries against travelling to Mindanao, MinBC chair Vicente Lao is positive that the tourism sector of Mindanao will still have a big boost come 2018.

“A lot of the infrastructure in Mindanao is really not into tourism. But lately, with the advent of the promotion done by the tourism department, we have seen a lot of developments and investments in the tourism sector. We have a lot of big hotels coming up, a lot of resorts, and those are what the tourists will need. It’s useless for you to keep on inviting tourists if you can’t even provide board and lodging for them. With the new investments coming in to Mindanao and the imminent solution of peace and order in Mindanao, we see that tourism will have a big boost,” he said.

As for Mindanao’s agribusiness sector which had always been its strength, Lao said it would be improved with the construction of the Mindanao Railway System as it would improve transport of commodities, opening more areas in Mindanao for trade. Through this, the competitive advantage of Mindanao against other areas of the countries specifically in terms of agriculture will be improved.

“Mindanao’s strength has always been agriculture. Now, we can already invite agribusiness manufacturing to do further processing for our agricultural products in Mindanao and that will bring in additional jobs and additional livelihood to a lot of people in Mindanao. The president (Rodrigo Duterte) had been aggressively pushing for a lot of infrastructure to be done in Mindanao including post-harvest facilities, (development) of ports and airports,” Lao said.

As for the construction industry, the “Build, build, build” program of the administration, which translated more infrastructure facilities to be constructed and improved, is expected to further spur the construction industry in the island. JPA