DAVAO City councilors will attend the economic and tourism roadshow in Japan.
Committee chair on trade and communication Councilor Jimmy Dureza confirmed on Tuesday, September 26, that he along with committee chair on tourism Councilor Al-Ryan Alejandre will join the Economic and tourism roadshow in Japan slated October 16 to 20.
The two councilors will join Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte Carpio in the roadshow.
"We will be selling the city to the investors. We will be visiting cities of Kyoto and Tokyo and two other areas. This is part of our economic, business and tourism roadshow in Japan," he said, adding that the office of the city mayor and the committee on trade, commerce and industry, and committee on tourism will be bringing businessmen, members of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and officials of the Davao City Investment and Promotion Center (DCIPC).
He said that technical personnel from the DCIPC will be the ones to make the necessary briefing, orientation of the potential of Davao City for future foreign investments.
"We feel that Japan is looking at Davao City as a major destination for Japanese investors. In fact, a lot of major infrastructure programs are focused in Davao City and there are Japanese businessmen who are interested to invest. We will be selling Davao City because there are a lot of agricultural products that we could sell. We hope that the Davao businessmen and Japanese businessmen will develop partnership with the Japanese counterparts," he said.
He also said they had a roadshow two or three years ago in Singapore which successfully promoted cacao production.
"Basically it was a business matching of private businessmen facilitated by the City Government, they are the ones who discussed possible investments in the city. They were able to somehow make some business deals at that time. We developed our market for our cacao and the Singaporeans are doing business in the city with our cacao farmers to supply their cacao requirement," he said.
Dureza said they are eyeing to promote the agriculture, hotel, and tourism sector in Japan.
"Basically in the agriculture we will be selling the products of the city, the usual products we have like banana, pineapple, fruits, pomelo and agricultural products being produced in the city," he said.
Dureza said the budget for the official delegation to the roadshow will be coming from the DCIPC.
"The official delegation will be only the two of us. There are other councilors who will like to go there also but they will be going there at their own expense," Dureza said.
He added that they are still in the process of finalizing possible participants because they are limiting the number of delegation. (KVC)