Dev’t of industrial park in DavOr eyed to start in Dec

THE $27-billion industrial park in Davao Oriental is targeted to commence construction within December to the first quarter of 2019, said a Davao Oriental provincial official.

It was October of last year when Maydeeh Libago, executive assistant of Pionaire Finance Limited bared the details of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project dubbed as “Marina and Industrial Park” to be located at Brgy. Maputi, Banaybanay, Davao Oriental.

The provincial government of Davao Oriental is currently on the process of acquisition of the lands with accumulated land area of 850-hectares owned by different private businessmen and cooperatives.

“Last week, I already met the land owners, there are about 200 of them. We would actually need 1,500 hectares for the industrial park itself and about 500 hectares for the relocation. So that’s about 2,000 hectares. This 850-hectare land property is actually currently under the Certificate of Land Ownership Awards (CLOA) under the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR),” said Ednar Dayanghirang, chief of staff of Governer Nelson Dayanghirang during the Kapehan sa Dabaw press conference yesterday, April 9, at SM City Davao.

He added on top of the 850-hectare land property, the rest of the land will be acquired from individual land owners.

Dayanghirang said the industrial park will have five major plants which will include the powerplant which will source out energy from liquefied petroleum gas, cement factory, urea factory, petrochemical factory wherein crude oil will be imported to be make into gasoline, diesel, or petroleum, and manufacturing of machines that will be sold abroad. These machines include those that are capable of producing water from air. The other component of the project will also include the five-kilometer international port which will be from Brgy. Maputi and will extend towards Brgy. Piso.

“Also, we will put up a 500 hectares relocation area for those who wanted to be relocated or the plant workers. This will be a new town site – a new 'city'. The project, once fully operational, is targeted to employ about 15,000 individuals," Dayanghirang said.

In an earlier article published by Sunstar Davao, it was reported how the investors consider the location of the industrial park to be strategic as it is near the Davao Gulf. This makes the plan of establishing the port of cargo vessels within the marina area also ideal.

This project was first envisioned to be located at Davao Occidental but due to some land issues including the zoning, it was cancelled and was then transferred to Davao Oriental.