PUSHING for lower power cost, upskilling of workers to become job-ready, helping small businesses recover faster through business continuity and resilience planning and making Cebu an investor-friendly destination will be some of the programs that newly elected chamber president Charles Kenneth Co would like to accomplish during his one-year stint.
During his first press conference as the president of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Friday, March 11, 2022, Co said the business community expects the cost of power to go up as a result of the rising fuel prices in the global market.
“It has already gone up. We have started our talks with Visayan Electric Company and they were very cooperative and helpful in giving us advice. They’re saying that right now they are expecting power shortage to happen in summer so we need to prepare for that and hopefully, they’ll find a way to mitigate the expected power shortfall,” said Co.
Green energy option
To prepare for this eventuality, Co advised businesses to avail themselves of the green energy option program (GEOP) that aims to provide consumers an option to source their electricity supply from renewable energy resources, such as biomass, solar, wind, geothermal, ocean energy and hydropower.
GEOP is one of the various programs under the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 which aims to promote the development of renewable energy in the country.
Under the regulation, those with monthly average peak electricity requirements equal to or greater than 100-kilowatt hour are the first set of consumers that can benefit of the GEOP program.
Co said as a result consumers or businesses will no longer be constrained to only source their power supply from the distribution utility DU of their location.
“This is open to everyone not just for chamber members,” he said. “Before we don’t have a choice but to only source from the available DU in our place but now we have the choice. Hopefully, businesses and consumers can save on power, especially now that power cost is going up because prices of coal have more than doubled.”
The chamber will also be working with the logistics sector as the import and export sectors are suffering from a backlog of shipments due to Typhoon Odette. According to Co, ports in Cebu are full of empty containers and there are not enough cargoes going out.
“This is another struggle of businesses now. We have asked the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas if they can do something about it like talk with the shipping companies to bring the containers outside of Cebu,” he said.
Investment office
Moreover, Co also vowed to entice more investors to invest in Cebu. He said the chamber has a project with the Cebu City Government to create an investment office that will cater to all foreign and local businesses looking for investors in the city.
“This is like an investment matching office. We are also hoping to make it a one-stop center,” he said.
To help businesses become more competitive, Co also promised to launch programs that would upskill workers and make them job-ready. He said the chamber would further strengthen its collaboration with the government, industry and academe to produce a highly qualified workforce.
“One of the challenges of people having no work is because they don’t have relevant skills to earn money or to be hired,” he said. “We will also be encouraging entrepreneurship.”
The chamber will also leverage government support, grants and financial programs and projects to revive and strengthen MSMEs in various industries.
Co replaced immediate past president Felix Taguiam who served the chamber for two years.