Investment talks

“OUR TARGET is that at least P10 million is spent by out-of-town visitors in San Fernando every weekend.”

So declared Mayor Edwin Santiago at last week’s meeting of the reconvened Investments Incentives Board composed of the regional offices of the Department of Trade and Industry and the National Economic Development Authority and the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce (PamCham). So trumpeted a press release from the city information office headlined “Mayor EdSa keen on investments promotion”.

Santiago was pepping up his push for the full implementation of the…well, Investment Incentive Code “that will benefit new and expanding businesses in the capital city.”

So, will that mean the exclusion of old and downsizing or constricting businesses in the city from the benefits of the Code? Now, that’s some class legislation there, Sir.

Anyways, Santiago may have to set some target higher than the P10-million weekend expense of out-of-towners, that having been long achieved. Ask not how, where and when. Just take your favourite spot at SM City Pampanga on a weekend and find the indubitable proof of what we just said, er, wrote.

What’s Santiago to do in this wise is to make sure of the city gets its fair share of what’s incoming to SM. And for that matter to Robinsons Starmills too, and SM San Fernando Downtown, S&R and Walter Mart as well.

With the Code, the city expects the “the influx of new businesses” and the corresponding job generation and local revenue augmentation. And Santiago was quick to point that one of the first business applicants is the Best Western International partnering with locals to put up a five-storey international standard hotel – the “first-of-its-kind ‘green’ building in the city” – to be constructed in the city’s business district of Dolores.  

For added measure, one Glenn Nakamura, identified as the area development manager of Best Western International, was quoted as saying: “I am very confident that this project will work.” We believe you, Sir.

Not to be left out in the act is the councillor who fancies himself as some green crusader – the Honorable Lito Ocampo, chair of the trade and industry committee, “disclosing his plans of crafting ordinances to promote eco-tourism and enforcement of laws that will promote discipline and order.” 

“We want to promote the City as a tourist destination that is why we are welcoming these kinds of investments,” said he.

Yeah, easier said than done there, Your Honor.

Given that a simple erection – and quick destruction – of height restriction barriers at the JASA-MacArthur Highway junction flyover created horrendous traffic not only in the immediate vicinity but as far as the arterial roads north, south, east and west.

And did he say “eco-tourism”?

What is in the City of San Fernando that can, even remotely, spell eco-tourism?

Ah, yes, the still operational open dumpsite in Barangay Lara, in some perverse ecological attraction, er, destruction, of sort. 

Indeed, what is in the city government that bear, even the slightest traces of some green conscience?

No, the city government has not had the slightest remorse, much less made amends for the massacre of the trees along MacArthur Highway which it – along with cohorts PamCham and the Department of Public Works and Highways – perpetrated. Indeed, the stand of this triumvirate of tree killers to rid the whole stretch of the national highway of trees still – to this time – remains as obstinate as ever. Notwithstanding the cities of Angeles and Mabalacat having effectively stayed the DPWH’s chainsaw in their respective areas of jurisdiction.

Eco-tourism in the City of San Fernando?

Spare us of this hogwash.

Meanwhile, the city’s investment code also identified manufacturing, services, industrial estates, agri-business, and waste management facilities as investment priority areas.

Make the last in that list first, and you’re talking.