PH, China to sign industrial parks deal
Manila will soon sign an agreement with Beijing involving the establishment of Chinese industrial parks in the Philippines, the chief of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) said.
“The target is to sign the agreement in November,” BCDA President and CEO Vivencio Dizon told reporters in a recent interview at the Finance department.
Dizon noted that the establishment of Chinese industrial parks was one of the topics discussed by Manila and Beijing during last year’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.
The next step following the signing of a deal, he said, is the drafting of a masterplan.
“Industrial parks have to be contiguous and flat, so that has to be master-planned jointly with BCDA. That will maybe take another 6 months,” Dizon said
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd, meanwhile, said China viewed the establishment of industrial parks as a way of strengthening commercial ties between the Philippines.
He said the Philippines was looking at a park in the Chinese city of Suzhou that China had built in cooperation with Singapore as the model for an industrial zone in New Clark City in Pampanga.
Dizon noted that besides New Clark City, the government was also scouting for sites across the country.
“It’s just that the first area that they felt was really [viable was]the New Clark City primarily because of the connectivity to the airport and the adjacent infrastructure like [the]SCTex (Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway) and Subic,” he explained.
Dominguez said that locating industrial parks in other areas would not be a problem for the government since it owned the land to be used.
“In our case, there are no issues on right of way because it’s our land. So we develop it, it gets enhanced and it becomes our asset,” he said.
Lastly, Dizon stressed that the development of industrial parks would also bring in more Chinese locators.
The industrial parks, he also noted, will be limited to medium and light industries.
“We don’t want a steel plant but maybe we can accommodate [an investment]if it’s a car assembly plant, robotics assembly, semiconductors, laboratories, or training facilities,” Dominguez added.
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