By Mai Gevera

Davao City (28 November) -- Formerly an agricultural area, Mindanao has slowly felt the rise of the services sector, which is significantly growing along with the agriculture sector.

This year, Mindanao is growing by 36 percent in the services sector, a significant increase as the agriculture sector slowed down with just 37 percent.

Ever Abasolo, Senior Economic Development Specialist of the Mindanao Economic Development Council (MEDCO) bared during the Kapehan sa SM the big potential of the services sector eyed to further spur development in Mindanao.

"Before, Mindanao is purely driven by agriculture. This time, we are seeing an upward movement of the services and industry sector," Abasolo added.

However, he clarified that agriculture still remains as a big contributor to the growth rate of Mindanao in 2006. Data showed that Mindanao has a growth rate of 5.2 percent in the last quarter of this year, few steps higher than last year's growth rate of 4.3 percent.

The strong production of agricultural products and a strong performance of the export sector have brought about the said growth.

The national region posted few notches ahead of Mindanao's growth for reasons that some sectors in Mindanao did not perform as good as the agriculture and industry sectors.

"Mindanao may have performed less than the national but the gap is so slim which only shows that Mindanao could still do better in the coming years," he said.