ILOILO City – Iloilo city and province are positioned to recover once the coronavirus disease pandemic is over, and agriculture will be the key, said Ilonggo senator Franklin Drilon during yesterday’s virtual Iloilo Investment Forum.
“The game changer for the economic development of Iloilo, anchored on agriculture, is the P11.2-billion Jalaur multipurpose dam project,” said Drilon.
The forum’s theme was “Re-imagining Iloilo’s Next Economy”. Its unusual setting was not lost on Drilon.
“I have spoken in a number of investment fora on Iloilo but this forum is completely in a different setting, and the most challenging,” he said.
The investment forum was held amid a contraction of the Philippine economy in numbers never seen before.
“It is the worst since World War 2. In the second quarter, our gross domestic product had a negative growth rate of 16.9 percent. For the third quarter, it shrank by 11.5 percent. By the end of this year, it is predicted that our economy would have contracted by at least eight percent compared to 2019,” said Drilon.
That the forum focused on agriculture was, in Drilon’s view, a step in the right direction.
“Against the grim economic outlook, agriculture is a silver-lining. The agriculture sector expanded by 1.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, and continued with a 1.2 percent growth in the third quarter,” he said.
On the other hand, he pointed out, almost all sectors of the economy shrank this year, particularly the industry sector which suffered a negative growth of 17.2 percent. Services, to which the tourism sector belongs, contracted by 10.6 percent.
Looking therefore at the Philippine Economic Map, Drilon said, there is no question that agriculture, and tourism, are the backbones of the economic strategy and growth for Iloilo and Region 6.
But the game changer for Iloilo is the Jalaur multipurpose dam project, said Drilon.
He pushed for this project with the encouragement of the chairman of the Iloilo Economic Development Foundation, Alfonso Uy, in 2008.
The project, located in Calinog, Iloilo, is now almost halfway in its completion and may be inaugurated in two years’ time.
“This dam will provide a year-round irrigation facility to 32,000 hectares of farmlands in 25 municipalities in Iloilo. It will benefit at least 750,000 farmers as the rice production will double from the present 142,000 metric tons to almost 300,000 annually,” said Drilon.
The mega dam will also create 800,000 hectares of water reservoir, a magnet for tourism investment, and 86,000 cubic meters of potable water per day.
“As you will see, agriculture is the pandemic bright spot as we look forward to the completion of the Jalaur Dam,” said Drilon./PN
