How SEZ Creates More Works and Enriches Host LGUs

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.

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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”.

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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?

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(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)