DAVAO CITY—The City of Panabo in Davao del Norte is planning to showcase its various manufacturing plants in an industrial estate to visitors and tourists visiting the city.
Located inside the city is Anflo Industrial Estate, an 88-hectare PEZA (Philippine Economic Zone Authority) agro-industrial park, which is home to several industries, such as the tennis ball factory of Head Sport Philippines, set to become the largest tennis ball factory in the world.
Panabo City Information Officer Michael Angel Resueño says they are starting to coordinate with the AIE to tour the guests around the factories and facilities, especially visitors from other local government units (LGUs) and government offices who are on benchmarking or study tours like Lakbay Aral.
“Recently, we have partnered with them (AIE) for our guests in the LGU. So whenever there are benchmarks na ginagawa sa (being done LGU we included the AIE as one of the sites,” Resueño said during their guesting at the recent Department of Tourism’s PEP Talks Media Forum held at SM Lanang.
The city information officer said, though technically AIE is not open to tourists, the city government can facilitate visits to the estate through the city tourism office.
“There are a lot of visitors doing benchmarking in the city, there are representatives from different embassies, recently we have a benchmark from Maguindanao del Sur na mga officials, and we included the AIE in the visit,” Resueño said.
He added that the visits are also a way for establishing linkages with the AIE and the different LGUs as the factories are looking for sources of raw materials such as rubber and coconuts.
“There are a lot of foreign investors who need coconut producers, rubber they need producers of saba, and they export that to other countries,” Resueño said.
For City Tourism Officer Allan Roy Gencianos, they are developing a package tour for those wanting to visit the estate.
“Isa na sa ongoing project sa city (it is an ongoing project of the city) since we are going to develop our tourism culture development plan, that is one area where we will create a tour package allotted to the agri-industrial component in the city, which we can sell to the tourists,” Gencianos said.
They are starting to promote the industrial park with a planned Regional Information Officers Network meeting that will be held at the AIE on September 25. The RION is composed of the different information officers belonging to the local government units across Davao Region.
“This September 25 is the Regional Information Officers Network Meeting and Panabo is the host, and we are so glad that AIE will host the meeting on behalf of Panabo, so our information officers in Davao Region will experience the AIE, and they will also invite their constituents and LGUs to visit AIE,” Resueño said. (PIA/RGA)