URDANETA CITY—Big investments from Taiwan will continue to elude Pangasinan until after the province completes its own infrastructure and facilities for export.

Former Urdaneta Mayor Amadeo Perez Jr., now chair of the Manila Economic Cooperation Office (MECO) based in Taiwan, said Taiwanese investors are still heading to parts of the country that have international shipping ports, international airports and economic zones.

“As MECO chair, I am trying to convince Taiwanese investors to come to Pangasinan but our big setback is we do not have big ports, ”said Perez during a special edition of the Media in Action Forum of the Pangasinan Press Club here.

He pointed out that investors opt for places where they can easily manufacture and ship out their finished products for export.

These include Cebu, Clark, Subic and Batangas, which all have special economic zones and either a shipping port, airport, or both.

An international shipping port is currently being built in Sual town while an international airport is in the initial phase of construction in Alaminos City. There is also an allocated area for a special economic zone but the development of the infrastructure is still in the drawing board.

Perez noted that the investors fear setting up operations outside economic zones where local government units and officials do not always have clear-cut policies for large-scale investments.

AGRICULTURE

Nonetheless, Perez said there are some small and medium-scale Taiwanese investors who have ventured out in the Philippine countryside for varied projects such as in aquaculture and agriculture.

In Sual and here in his hometown Urdaneta, for example, he said there is a Taiwanese enterprise experimenting on the production of different high-yielding Taiwanese rice varieties.

If that experiment in Urdaneta proves fruitful, he added, the technology will be shared to local farmers to help them have higher yields.

At the same time, Perez said he has talked with Governor Amado Espino Jr. and the governor of neighboring Tarlac about a possible trip for local farmers to Taiwan, where they can take a crash course in modern rice production from Taiwanese farmers.

He said that in the 1950s, Taiwan sent its farmers to learn rice farming at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Laguna. When they went back to Taiwan, they improved the technology through continued research.

Currently, the average harvest in Taiwan fields during normal conditions is 300 cavans per hectare and still at about 200 cavans when natural calamities such as typhoons hit.

Perez said he is making arrangements with the Taiwan Economic Cooperation Office (TECO) in Manila to bankroll one-third of the expenses of the local farmers while the rest will be paid for by the local governments of Pangasinan and Tarlac.

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