THE city of Dagupan is being eyed as a potential economic zone to host foreign investors in a bid to help prime up the economy of the country and boost the 10-point agenda of President Rodrigo Duterte.

This was bared by Emmanuel SD Lopez, consultant of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) who came to Dagupan on Thursday and held talks with city officials led by City Administrator Farah Decano.

The PEZA is one of the investment promotion activities of the government under the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) which is the regional development of economic zones.

“We are hoping that if you have something on the line we would like to include you in the ecozone,” Lopez said.

He sees possible development of aqua culture and processing industry, and because of the city population (171,000 plus based on the last census), it can also explore the possibility of putting up a Business Processing Outsourcing-Information Technology park.

A BPO-IT park needs at least one hectare or a building with 10,000 square meters as 1,000 call center agents could easily be absorbed by just one company.

He said a BPO-IT park is ideal in the city since it hosts three universities and 12 colleges, whose students speak good English, considered the language of business all over the world.

“With the support of your local government, it can build an ecozone and PEZA will collaborate to develop it,” he said. The other ecozones are in Cebu, Cavite, Laguna, Baguio and other parts of the country.

With an ecozone in Dagupan, he said the graduates and the qualified unemployed no longer need to seek work overseas as jobs will soon be available to them.

He told city officials that the process of applying for an area to become an Export Processing Zone Authority- registered economic zone has been made simpler.

Among the fiscal incentives of an ecozone include the grant to locators of income tax holiday, land taxes holiday for four to six year and extendable to eight years and tax-free importation of all the capital equipment and the exemption from paying Value Added Tax (VAT).

The non fiscal incentive include the expedited processing of visas of foreign executives and the guarantee for industrial peace which means labor strikes are banned as they could setback productivity.

Informed by City Administrator Decano that Dagupan has a Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) that identified three additional growth areas: privately owned and classified as agricultural that need to be converted into commercial and industrial.

Lopez said PEZA has an existing memorandum of agreement with both Department of Agrarian Reform and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources that gives leeway to conversion, provided that the land is proven to be no longer productive. (Leonardo Micua)

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