THE Davao City Investment and Promotion Center (DCIPC) is planning to expand its services to further attract investors.
DCIPC head April Marie Dayap said in an interview with SunStar Davao that instead of just assisting interested investors in processing their business applications in the city, they want now to personally facilitate their applications to make it more convenient especially for foreign investors and even those who are from outside the city.
The office is mandated to provide investors and the local business community the necessary assistance to help start a business in the city, including assisting them in securing their business permits and licenses.
Dayap, however, said that if we want more investors to enter the city, there is a need to exert more effort in attracting them, thus the plan to personally facilitate and not just assist in processing their business permits and licenses.
“We also want to (personally) facilitate business that wants to put up here, not only promoting the city, so that they will feel the convenience in putting up a business here in the city,” she said.
“We do not really facilitate the application currently but we feel that we have to give them full assistance especially for businesses that are foreign or those that are not homegrown because we want them to feel the ease of doing business but they have to be compliant on their requirements and documentations asked by offices,” she added.
She said they are currently looking into the plan to personally facilitate business applications instead of just providing assistance to avoid technicalities and legal repercussions.
Dayap said that she learned from other countries like China that businessmen really prefer ease of doing business than investment incentive packages.
Davao City offers fiscal incentives of business tax exemption for three years and real property tax exemption for two years for enterprises with a minimum capital of P3 million and can be classified under any of the Preferred Investment Areas, indicated in the Davao City Investment Incentive Code.
Influx of investors was seen in the area where processing of business permits and licenses takes a shorter time even with “just enough” deals for incentive packages.
“I asked about the incentive packages and they said that if it is irresistible, like the land is free and the privilege not to pay business taxes for a longer period of time, that is okay. However, if the investment incentive package is ‘just enough’, investors would rather go where it is more convenient to process business applications,” she said.