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By Paul M. Icamina, Special Reports Editor
DAVAO CITY: A city has to be run like a business, he says. And
Roberto U. Teo is all business.
The former dean of the Ateneo de Davao Graduate
School of Business heads the Davao City Investment Promotion Center.
In recent years, investment in Davao topped P172
billion, more than half of that in property development, tourism and
manufacturing.
The Davao City Investment Incentive Board says
investments worth P1.4 billion created 3,679 jobs in 2008 alone.
Tourism was worth P7.85 billion in 2007 and
P17.28 billion more downstream. Tourist arrival was pegged at
655,651 visitors last year.
“Investments, particularly in tourism,
property development and light manufacturing are attracted to Davao
because of the incentives we give.” Teo points out.
They are attracted to the city because of its
incentives that include exemptions from building permit fees and
other charges; mayor’s permit fees, business sales taxes, other
fees and charges for three years; and exemptions from basic real
property tax for two years.
As assistant city administrator for operations,
Teo is also dead serious. “We don’t condone extrajudicial
killings,” Teo tells The Manila Times.
“The violence in New York and other big cities
are worse than here in the Philippines,” he points out, adding
that in New York, the average crime volume per month per 10,000
persons is 59.8. In comparison, the average crime volume per month
in Davao City is 0.88 per 10,000 persons.
“And involves many factors, from neighborhood
fights to petty crime, gang wars and drug-related incidents,” Teo
says.
A Social Weather Station survey in 2007 showed
that public perception of corruption and kickbacks, on average, was
10 percent in private business and 15 percent in public
transactions. The next year, it was 10 percent for both.
“Patas na. If we can improve by just 1
percent, then the public sector is better off. All we need is the
political will, and we have the mayor’s support for that,” Teo
says.
“Our mayor is focused on peace order in the
belief that without peace there will be no development. Davao needs
to be peaceful for investments to enter. Our crime rate is one of
the lowest in Asia,” he says.
Teo relates how in the 1980s, Davao City was
known as a killing field when there was out-migration, including
business. This was the time of the Alsa Masa and Nica-ragdao, a word
play on Nicaragua and Davao’s Agdao district, a depressed area
then that was a no-man’s land after 6 p.m.
Now it is a progressive area and safe even in
the middle of the night.
“Since Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was appointed
vice mayor by Cory in 1986 and then was elected mayor, investments
started coming in. The city has been growing since then and Davaoeños
started investing here,” Teo points out.
Davao put up an investment promotion center in
1994, the first in the country; other cities followed.
“As long as it remains peaceful, development
will come in. This is the only way to encourage locals to invest in
infrastructure buildings, businesses. We also felt that foreigners
will be hesitant to investment if the peace and order situation was
not right,” Teo says.
Others followed, he says, from SM, Robinsons to
the Ayala group, Crown Regency and many other businesses from
Manila. Foreign money, including that from Japan, also started
coming in.
Most construction in Davao, as in subdivisions,
is local money, like that of the Gaisanos who have been here for 30
years as well as malls of the New Commercial Center Corp. and
branches of the Central Convenience Stores that are sprouting all
over.
“What makes Davao click is that its people are
very friendly and disciplined. When the anti-smoking ordinance was
passed everybody followed; the same was true when we banned
fireworks,” Teo says.
Teo, who was responsible for Ateneo de Davao’s
MBA program that included public administration and nursing, ticks
off the city’s attractions: there’s no typhoon; it has the only
911 emergency number in the world, except that in Canada and the
United States. And electric power is not an issue.
“Davao is ideal because the cost of doing
business in Davao is cheaper than in Manila and Cebu,” Teo says.
“Especially in call centers, you get the same
infrastructure as in Manila and Cebu, we have the same telcos, the
same fiber optics connections. Manila has no advantage over Davao
and Cebu, except that it has more buildings,” he says.
Robinson has 5,000 square meters for call
centers, Ayala is constructing a call center building, the Floirendo
group has an IT park, there is the Villa Abrille group, the NCC mall
has converted its fourth floor into a call center, and SM plans to
put up one.
“We have more than enough space for call
centers,” he says, adding the city graduates more than 12,000
college students a year from 94,000 enrollees.
“We have more than enough in manpower and
infrastructure. Davao is the next ICT and call center
destination,” Teo says.
For three years, Davao ranked No. 1 (in 2001,
2005 and 2007) in the Most Competitive Metro City category as
surveyed and evaluated by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).
“We bested Makati, Cebu, Manila and Quezon
City,” says Teo, a chemical engineer graduate of De La Salle
University with a Masters in Business Management from AIM.
Still, Teo says, Davao will always be an
agriculture-driven economy. Out of 244,000 hectares, 67 percent of
that is in agriculture and forestry. Export commodities come mostly
from Davao farms shipped, the produced shipped from Davao ports.
In the future, he says, it will always be a
service- and agri-driven economy in terms of tourism, education and
financial centers. Light manufacturing for food processing, for
example, will take center stage.
“Heavy industries will be minimal because we
are also concerned about the environment, we don’t want pollution.
It is a big city with a rural atmosphere,” Teo observes.
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