By
Mortz C. Ortigoza
I
dropped
by recently
and had some tête-à -tête
with Dagupan City’s local government unit (LGU) Administrator Vlad
Mata. The athletic looking
executive and an alumnus of the National
Defense College of the Philippines on National Security
Administration
(with
a ranked of Marine Lt. Colonel (Reserve)
)
is a fellow Mindanaon whose father is a son of Agusan del Norte Province.
“When
you were the city administrator of Tarlac City in 2016 how much was
the annual appropriation budget (AAB) of the LGU there?”
I asked him since I was curious if that local government in
Central Luzon and three hours ride to the Bangus City
hit
the P3 billion mark
already
from her
collection of the business
and real properties’ taxes primordially from
the floor
areas of the edifices of the locators
of the special economic zones (SEZs) there. Notwithstanding her share of the internal revenue allotment (IRA) from the
national government.
“It
was P2.3 billion then but I mulled to spike it to P2.7
billion when I was the administrator there in 2016,” he
retorted.
VISIONARY
SOLON. Author having breakfast with Congressman Ramon “Monmon”
Guico, III (extreme left) who is a pilot. The family owned WCC
Aeronautical & Technological College - one of the biggest
aviation schools in the country.
But
he did not
attain the yeoman’s job of hitting the P2.7B because he left the
post of a “Little Mayor” there and found another work in Imperial
Manila.
I
crowed about the billions of pesos AAB of neighboring
Tarlac (she became a city in April
18, 1998) and kept
comparing on the
one billion of pesos AAB of Dagupan City in 2019 because of the
investment juggernauts
that put shops
there
like
Sumitomo International Wiring Systems that became a driver of the
economic growth of the
once
forlorn city I called in my blog/column as Pee City.
“Because
it has an
industrial park there,”
Mata, a graduate
of
the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Harvard Kennedy School
of Government,
butted in why
the economy of the nascent
city
catapulted
her
and became the top two richest city in Central and Northern Luzon
and the Cordillera Region playing second fiddle to
tourists drawing Baguio City.
***
Here
what I wrote on 2017: Daley Dan Pasion, executive of a multi-billion
pesos Japanese firm Sumitomo told the attendees of the Luzon Ecozone
Summit held at the Stadia in Dagupan City how the presence of
industries like Sumitomo International Wiring Systems transformed the
once slumbering town Tarlac into a burgeoning city in the early 1990s
after Sumitomo put shop at the Luisita Industrial Parks’ Special
Export Processing Zone in Barangay San Miguel.
The
privately owned park hosted corporations like URC, Centro Techno
Park, Philippine Long Distance Telephone, and others.
Before
it became a city on April 18, 1998, Tarlac, because of its
backwardness, was mocked as a pee center of commuters and motorists
that ply the long Manila –Baguio City – Ilocos Highway.
Pasion
said Sumitomo started amid the Asian Currency Crisis in 1991 with
6,000 workers mostly assembling cars’ wiring harness around the
world for Toyota, Honda, Mazda and vehicles like Kawasaki.
“Without
us the vehicles would not switch and run,” he quipped.
He
said 90% of its employees based on its plant in Barangay San Miguel are high
school graduates.
He
cited that 6,000 workers multiplied by five in a nuclear family means
30,000 probable consumers in the market.
“Because
of us, Tarlac first saw its first McDonald,” he
told the crowd here led by Dagupan City Mayor Belen T. Fernandez,
whose family is also the franchisee of the same American food chain.
Tarlac
is a first class component city in Region 3 with a land area of 275
square kilometer.
Other
business firms that sprouted like mushrooms in and out of the
Industrial Zone were Pancake House, Jollibee, Starbucks, Max
Restaurant, Pizza Hut, Robinsons, SM, and others.
When
I interviewed Mata
in
2017
he told me the following:
“Actually
under
performing
iyan. They have 76 barangays and a lot bigger in terms of population.
I
was working to increase it (revenues) by at least one- third when I
was administrator there”.
He
cited Dagupan
City
is a lot better on registering businesses than in Tarlac.
“Dagupan
has around 5000 plus businesses. Tarlac City has almost the same
number. When I went around, I sense I can double the number of
establishments. Maraming hindi registrado kasi”.
***
Can
Dagupan City under the stewardship of the young first term mayor
Brian Lim (and
of course the experience guidance of Mata who was the administrator
of Lim’s father a former mayor)
steers the coastal city into the level
of the
annual appropriation budget’s bragging right of
Tarlac City?
SEASONED LGU ADMINISTRATOR. Author (L) in a tête-à -tête with Dagupan City’s local government unit (LGU) Administrator Vlad Mata. Mata had stint as City Administrator of Tarlac City in 2016.
I
could not say if he can unless he intercedes for the creation of a
special economic zone just like what then Mayor Ramon “Mon-Mon”
Guico, III started in 2018.
Guico,
now a congressman, would
gloat
every time we meet at his house for
breakfast or lunch
or at his airport terminal in Binalonan, Pangasinan how the 12,000
workers of
Sumitomo will
transform the town, the one city (Urdaneta), and the other seven
towns
into a burgeoning district because of the multi-plier effects of the
economic zone he chalked up after the family sold to the Japanese and
Filipino consortium
24 hectares of their lands to make his vision come to fruition.
Here
what I posted at Facebook when I had lunch with the solon in July 16,
2020:
“Lunch
yesterday
with Congressman Monmon Guico. We discussed the multi-plier effects
of the 12,000 new workers in his brainchild economic zone that hosted
the Japanese clutch wiring firm Sumitomo. His family sold to the firm
24 hectares of land that would benefit not only 12,000 of his
constituents as workers but help their families and other new
businesses that will sprout in the periphery this coming February.
"With that mammoth employment marvel, Metro Urdaneta that
includes Binalonan will eclipse Metro Dagupan , Calasiao, and
Mangaldan economic areas. I know what I'm talkin congressman. I
interviewed before the head of Sumitomo Tarlac City and how it
transformed Tarlac as an LGU's behemoth in terms of annual
appropriation budget versus those cities in Region 1".
To
my readers, do you agree with my prognosis that Metro Urdaneta and
Binalonan will overtake economically Metro Dagupan, Calasiao, and Mangaldan in the near
future?
READ:
(You
can read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and
articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at
totomortz@yahoo.com)