Pampanga seen to benefit from property boom

CLARK FREEPORT — United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) senatorial candidate Jack Enrile is optimistic that Pampanga will benefit in the years ahead from the property boom in Metro Manila and other urban centers around the region.

Enrile, during a meeting with the Pampanga Press, inside Clark Freeport pointed out that sand quarrying in the province’s lahar areas is now Pampanga’s biggest source of revenue, raking in more than P600 million in taxes and fees in the last two years.

“With the quarrying industry bringing in millions in revenues to Pampanga’s coffers, the provincial government is in a good position to deliver vital social services and infrastructure to its constituents,” Enrile said.

Crude sand is used as filling materials while refined sand is mixed with cement or made into hollow blocks. The quarry industry is concentrated in Bacolor, Porac, Sta. Rita, Floridablanca, Mabalacat, Mexico, Minalin and Sto. Tomas towns.

Enrile noted that the Pampanga Provincial Government had used revenues from quarrying and other industries to fund the construction of new classrooms and roads and to improve district hospitals.

Official records showed that shares received by Pampanga villages hosting quarry operations from December 2010 to April 2012 exceeded P91 million.

As Cagayan congressman, Enrile helped in building various infrastructures that his constituencies in the first district actually needed: farm-to-market roads, irrigation and dredging systems, water impounding projects, and rehabilitation of roads and drainage.

Enrile was the principal author of the Batas Kasambahay, the Credit Access and Protection Reform Bill, the Anti-Monopoly Bill, and the Food for Filipinos First Bill.

Since 2010, Enrile has gone to more than 72 provinces consulting with various sectoral groups for his advocacy of food sovereignty. Enrile emphasized that with a population which will easily exceed 100 million, the country must adopt a sound and rationalized food plan to assure food security for all Filipinos, particularly the poor.