by Prix D Banzon

Davao City (27 October) -- Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) president Donald Dee told members of the Davao media last Wednesday that foreign businesses are ready to invest, however, the country does not have the needed facilities.

In the pipeline, he said are investments on mining, agriculture and communication but investors tend to hold back because they can’t own the land.

He said investors are entertaining second thought if there is no assurance and in the event that businesses don’t fair well they could easily recover losses because of their ownership of the land.

“I don’t think it (land) will be lost when granting ownership of land to investors because the natural resources will still be there, hindi nila yan maiuuwi,” he said.

He said investors would look at the bottom line first and not profit.

Mining for instance should not be looked at just purely on extractive basis. It has to go down to the supply chain like processing including safeguard of the environment and protection of the workers which must also be looked into.

With restrictive economy the workers go underground even without getting protected which is not right, he said.

But Dee said they remain confident of the country’s economy the fact that it went through difficult times.

“The climate remains positive and there are no signs why people will not come and invest when we talk about magnitude of investments,” he said.

He said PCCI sees to it that investments come to give jobs to dignify the Filipino people.

“There are investments but not enough because of lack of infrastructure,” he said.

The President, he said is going to prime the economy by really putting the infrastructure and that in the next three years some P1.3 billion is earmarked for infrastructure.

He said the foreign investors are looking at how the country upgrades its infrastructure programs which is also seen as creating more jobs for the unemployed.