by Prix D Banzon

Davao City (14 October) -- The recent spate of bombings in Mindanao reaffirms the common concern of foreign investors with regards to peace and order when looking at areas for possible investment.

Davao City director of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI XI) Teolulo Pasawa said when interviewed last Friday at the Garden Oasis during DTI the sponsored Microfinance Forum.

Mindanao is placed in the highest alert level after three separate bomb explosions occurred this week in Tacurong, Sultan Kudarat, in Makilala, North Cotabato and last Wednesday in Cotabato City.

“With the bombing it will reaffirm their fears in investing in the Philippines,” he said.

But he said it is not the peace and order that foreign investors are more concerned of but the stability of investment and the possibility of land ownership.

“The recent bombings and the immediate issuance of travel advisories by the government of Australia and the US preventing their respective citizens not to travel to any parts in Mindanao will create a negative effect on tourism and investments.” According to Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (DCCI) President Atty. Bienvenido Cariaga during an earlier interview.

Pasawa said that acts of terrorism could happen anywhere in the world and he could only hope that these investors had factored that in their plan for investments.

However he said the investors knew that the incidents did not happen in Davao City but then the city is part of Mindanao and others might generalize the situation.

“Our local investors in Davao already factored that issue in their investment and even before they had said that operation of business goes on as usual,” he said.

Pasawa meanwhile said that investments this year is showing good and in fact cited that the Davao City Investment and Promotions Center said in one of their meetings that they had already achieved their target for the year during the second quarter.

“There is always good signs for investment in Davao and the trend each year is continuously growing,” he said.

Meanwhile he said as far as ICT investment is concerned, Davao City already has two big call centers – the GCom and Link To Support. Both currently operate on 200 seats but could expand to 400 provided they have the needed human resource.

He said there are also four small operations with 20-seat capacity aside from the unreported smaller seat call centers.