Monday, July 1, 2013

DTI to conduct roving academy for SMEs

Aspiring Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Davao Region can increase the chances of setting up their own businesses through the SME Roving Academy.

“The SME Roving Academy is a machinery for information, communication and knowledge creation of Philippine SMES which aims to guide existing or aspiring entrepreneurs establish their own business or sustain existing ones,” Romeo Castañaga of the Department of Trade and Industry said during Monday’s Kapihan held at SM City Annex.

Castañaga said that with the launching of the SME Roving Academy during the 1st Philippine Investment Conference (I-Con) in Davao City last June, entrepreneurs can expect a package of interventions to help them start or sustain their businesses.

While the Conference aimed to showcase the investment opportunities in the country, it also aimed to steer interest towards the cluster based industrial development strategy to fasttrack countryside growth and development. He said they targeted 600 participants to the Conference, but achieved a 200% attendance with 1,050 participants during the two-day Conference.

He said the package of interventions will include the startup support to help the would-be entrepreneur to choose the appropriate business given his interest, skills and resources. If the entrepreneurs has decided to push through with the business then we will provide registration support, he added.

Also included in the package of interventions for the SMEs are product development, skills training, management and marketing training, entrepreneurship training and financing. The support will extend to helping the entrepreneur maintain or sustain the business or even go into export, he added.

Castañaga said the SME Roving Academy in Davao City will be conducted initially for free in time for the SME Week this July.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Duterte sets 5 priority areas in oath-taking speech

Rodrigo R. Duterte, who has taken his oath of office as Davao City Mayor for the 7th time Sunday, has unwittingly identified the five focus areas of his administration for the next three years including peace and order, environment, informal settlers, corruption and tourism.

While he mentioned the successful programs of the city in terms of the firecracker ban, smoking ban and curfew, Duterte reiterated the need to maintain the peace and order in the city by going after drug pushers, and other criminals.

“You can stop or leave the city vertically or horizontally,” was his warning to criminals.

Duterte said while the people could not fight and prevail against nature, he said Dabawenyos should take a deliberate action by de-clogging the canals, acquiring the needed rescue and weather monitoring equipment and continuing the conduct of barangay-based education campaign to prepare people.

“We should put a stress on the management of solid waste because these clog our canals and drainage systems resulting to floods,” he said.

He said the city has acquired relocation sites to accommodate those who live in danger zones. “There is no other option, you have to leave the place,” he added.

However, he said that relocation of informal settlers will only be allowed when the site is ready for habitation which means the people’s sources of livelihood should be accessible.

He said they plan to ask the business sector to relocate their businesses along these areas. Environment-protection and economic development should complement and not clash with each other, he added.

While he made mention of his plan to continuously promote Davao as a tourism destination, Duterte said he is deadest on stopping corruption in the city.


He asked the Ombudsman to fasttrack the appointment of a city Ombudsman to investigate corruption issues in the city. Duterte asked everyone to create a city where “opportunities abound and where every house is secured and every person is safe.”

PBGEA fears P4B in losses due to closure of Iran market

The Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) is seeking the support of the government in the wake of the possible closure of the Iran market due to the stoppage of operation of shipping companies bound for Iran effective this month.

“This could translate to losses of more or less P4 billion for our banana exporters who have not yet even recovered from the devastation caused by typhoon Pablo,” PBGEA executive director Stephen Antig said.

Antig said they have received an advisory from Mercury Steamship Agencies, Inc., an agent of the Pacific International Lines which ships bananas to Iran, about the suspension of its operations.

“We regret to inform you that Mercury Steamship Agencies, Davao will suspend the acceptance of cargoes into Iran effective June 16, 2013,” the Agency wrote in a letter sent to its valued clients. The letter further said that the last acceptance of cargoes bound for Iran was last June 15, 2013 on board Tilly Russ.

The shipping companies are suspending their operations to Iran, Antig said, as part of its commitment to comply with foreign trade regulations. It can be recalled that the United States has imposed economic and other sanctions against Iran as a result of the latter’s nuclear program. The sanctions are aimed to cut off Iran’s access to critical sources of revenue and to make its money useless outside the country.

Antig said the Iran market is one of the biggest banana markets in the Middle East, accounting for 50 percent of the Middle East market. If the shipping companies will no longer bring our bananas to Iran then what are we going to do with our products, he said.

“This is a potential man-made typhoon that will add to the burden of the Philippine banana industry,” Antig said. PBGEA, he said, has already informed the Department of Agriculture, Department of Trade and Industry and Department of Foreign Affairs about the problem and is waiting for their response.

With the suspension of operation of shipping companies bound for Iran, only APL or the American Presidential Line will be shipping good to Iran. However, APL will only load bananas bound for Iran if the exporter has a license from the US Treasury.

“This is very difficult to get and majority of our exporters here do not have this license,” he said. So now that our banana growers have rehabilitated their banana plantations after Pablo, where are they going to sell their bananas with this development?

Antig said that once again, the Philippines is suffering from an economic embargo which it is not a party to. He said the suspension will have tremendous effect on the region’s banana industry which can lead to the closure of 10,285 hectares of land planted to banana and potential job loss for up to 21,000 people.

1.7% rise in poverty, 95% employment rate In Davao Region a big puzzle for RDC XI

Outgoing Regional Development Council XI (RDC) chairperson and Davao City Mayor Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio said poverty incidence in the Davao Region was the lowest in Mindanao but was saddened by the high poverty incidence of 28.8 percent as of the first semester of 2012 which is a 1.7 percent increase from 2006.

However, she noted that the Region has sustained the 95 percent employment rates for both 2011 and 2012 which is evident of the expansion of the region’s absorptive capacity for employment.

“Pero pag medyo mataas ang poverty incidence and mataas ang rate ng employment, it makes you wonder and we have to look into this,” she said,

Duterte-Carpio said the planned targets for 2010 and 2011 were not achieved because of identified risks and external shocks including the slower recovery of the US and European economies that limit market options for banana exporters, high oil and energy prices and the selling by the small-scale miners of their gold produce in the black market.

“But the Gross Regional Domestic Product levels had been increasing and the Region has rebounded as the top economy among the six regions in Mindanao for 2011,” she said.

She admitted that the statistics on increasing poverty incidence is however evident of the non-inclusive growth. But on the other hand, the creation of jobs aimed at reducing poverty is an indication of inclusive growth which is why the two conflicting statistics of increasing poverty incidence and employment growth continue to puzzle economic workers in the region.

The RDC XI has identified the remaining challenges for the region in the remaining three years (2013-2016): slow decline in poverty incidence, unsustained economic growth levels, low productivity levels in almost all major sectors, slow growth in employment generation.

Friday, June 28, 2013

One-stop-shop for small renewable energy projects to help Minda-Mayor Sara

Davao City Mayor and Regional Development Council (RDC) XI chairperson Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio cited the establishment of a one-stop-shop for small renewable energy projects in Mindanao as one of her favorite accomplishments.

“We are trying to find a solution to Mindanao’s power problem just like the hydropower electricity plant project and establishing a one-stop-shop will hopefully encourage the implementation of small renewable energy projects here,” Duterte-Carpio said in an interview held after her State of the Region Address Wednesday.

She said smaller renewable energy projects that can produce 5 to 10 MegaWatts usually find it very time-consuming to go to Manila to process their papers and get approval for their projects. With the establishment of the one-stop-shop, she said, the proponents of these projects need not go to Manila anymore because “inter-agency na ang maghatag sa ilaha diri sa Mindanao (the different agencies will take care of the permits and papers which will be issued to them right in Mindanao).”

She said she is first a mayor before she is an RDC chairperson and her stand has always been for renewable sources of energy. “I prefer renewable sources of energy,” she said, and it is because of them that this one-stop shop has been established.

While she admitted that climate change might change the water source and can result to drought or overflowing, she reiterated that the development of renewable energy source “is our thrust.”

Without exactly saying it, Duterte-Carpio remains steadfast about her preference for renewable energy source and her doubts about other energy source like the coal-powered electric plant.

“More than the environmental degradation of coal-fired power plant, we also have to consider the health risks to people in the area,” she said. The negative effects of coal-fired power plants has already been experienced even by first world countries and we don’t want our people to experience that, she added.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

SPMC signs deal with HP, AMT to automate hospital

HP Philippines Managing Director Ryan Guadalquiver

Davao City-The Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) signed Thursday a deal with Hewlett-Packard (HP) Philippines and Accent Micro Technologies (AMT) to pave the way for the full automation of the hospital’s system in a span of five years.

“This is a five-year financial agreement on lease purchase that will be paid by the hospital gradually on a monthly basis to help us fully automate and digitalize the hospital,” SPMC Chief of Hospital Dr. Leopoldo Vega said during the signing held at the Marco Polo Hotel yesterday.

SPMC Chief Finance Office Barbara Cesar said the SPMC has conducted a public bidding for a company that can provide computers, infrastructure and backup on a lease to purchase basis considering the hospital’s meager resources.

“Through this partnership, we will be able to help SPMC respond to its IT requirements to support the expansion and growth it is undergoing,” HP Philippines Managing Director Ryan Guadalquiver said.

Unknown to many consumers, HP does not only sell Personal Computers and Laptops but it is also the largest solutions provider in the healthcare industry.

Vega said SPMC is a 600-bed hospital with a 200-percent or 1,200 occupancy rate. With this volume coupled with the hospital’s meager budget, he added, the only way to make hospital operation more efficient is through automation.

He said SPMC along with Segworks has embarked on developing applications for the various divisions including admission, billing, laboratory, documents and records.

“The applications developer has been with us for five years and around 85 percent of the modules have been developed,” he said. SPMC and AMT’s partnership with SPMC is good timing sine we already have the applications but we need a good infrastructure and system to implement that, he added.

Vega noted the development of the x-ray department which has for years, been running on analog with the use of films and reagents to develop a single chest x-ray. With the digitalization of the xray department today, he added, the hospital can capture the medical image of a patient just like a digital camera without film and reagents.

“What we need is to invest in software and computer that can produce the image on s screen with quick turnaround,” he said.

In five years time, he said, the hospital will be highly automated such that even the medical records of the patient including the address and other data will all be managed by the hospital so there is no need to fill out forms with the same information whenever patients have to go to the hospital.

“The vision is for the doctors to be able to look at patient information even without driving to the hospital because they can just check these records in their android phones,” he said.

Vega said they have started to convert patient records in digital format in preparation for the hospital’s automation plan.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

2 Govs, 1 Mayor to light up Tagum City’s famous Xmas Tree Tonight


No less than two governors and one mayor will lead the lighting up of Tagum City'sfamous giant Christmas Tree at 7 p.m. tonight, Wednesday, November 21 at the Freedom Park at the back of Tagum City Hall.
The lighting up, which will also coincide with the 3rd Food Festival, will be led by Mayor Rey Uy, Davao del Norte Governor Rodolfo del Rosario and Compostela Valley Governor Arturo Uy.
“Tagum City became popular when it built the country’s tallest Christmas Tree in 2006 at 153 feet,” Engr. Nemar Jumarito of the City Engineer’s Office said. The city’s Christmas Tree was reduced to only 113 feet in 2011 but still had an interesting design.
One of the attractions during the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony is the Christmas Medley rendition by the Tagum City Youth Orchestra which is composed of 330 music artists from the groups of Symphonic, Rondalla and Choir of the different schools in the city.
 
He said this year’s Christmas Tree will stand 109 feet in height and will have a different design with 300 pieces of clear raindrops designed to look like beads of rain is falling from the tree. The other decorations consisting of stars, flowers and angels have also been incorporated in the design, he said. The tree has a star design on top with a combination of pig tails and rope lights.
 
Jumarito said the Christmas Tree will operate on two sets of controls, the manual and the automatic control. The tree will be manually lit up during the opening night but will be set to automatic for future and everyday use so that it is turned on every 6 p.m. and turned off every 2 a.m. 
 
The start of the Christmas celebration in the city is expected to be very merry and literally bright, he said, considering that three areas have been set up including the mini-park area with a mini zoo theme with lighted animals.
 
Jumarito said a total of 14 arcs have been constructed within the City Hall area with lanterns and an assortment of rope lights.
(Thanks to Tagum City CIO for the photo)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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