A CZECH business leader said that businesses in his country are interested in investing in Davao's agricultural products.
“We want to import your products, your bananas, your pineapples, agricultural products. On the opposite, we want to export also technologies for the factories, for energetics, for transportation [to the Philippines],” Michal Stefl, vice president of the Czech Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview with SunStar Davao on February 16 during the business-to-business meetings held at Dusit Thani in Davao City.
Stefl said that among the technologies that they want to export to the Philippines are machinery and agricultural technology like fertilizer factories.
Stefl also said that they have been in talks with other Davao businessmen on improving renewable energy in the region.
“For instance, we are discussing hydra-energetic [energy] which will be interesting here, ecological management waste system. I also think it will be interesting [to improve] the system of water treatment, which I think is based on [Filipinos’] needs,” he said.
He said the Czech Republic’s economy is growing again and is now much more open to foreign investors after the country transitioned to a federal republic from a socialist republic dating back to 1989.
Stefl said much had improved in their small and medium-sized companies, academe, and their technological processes. Forty percent of their country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is from the industrial sector.
He added that Czech investors are looking towards the very “fast-growing” Asian market, specifically the Philippine market. Czech-made products, according to him, are “Western in quality, but Eastern in price” in which Asians and Filipinos alike might be interested as well.
“I think this will be a symbiosis... we can make some common compromise for growth not only in Czech Republic but also the Philippines,” he said.
Together with Stefl in the business-to-business meetings held at Dusit Thani, Davao City was Jan Skopecek, Deputy Speaker of the Czech Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, Jana Šedivá, Czech ambassador to the Philippines, and Czech business representatives from the energy, food, and telecommunications sector, to name a few.
The foreign delegates also had a courtesy call with Mayor Sebastian Z. Duterte in the afternoon. ICE