03 January 2006
Frustrated BSL taps private investors to fund bangus plant
IF there is anything that the Dagupan City government fully regrets not having implemented this year, it is the establishment of the city’s P150 million bangus processing plant.
This was disclosed by Mayor Benjamin Lim who said the first ever bangus processing plant in the city would have been the major flagship project of his administration for 2005 had it materialized.
He said the project was conceived as a partnership between the city government and the national government, intended to put more added value to the bangus, create jobs for the unemployed and earn the much-needed foreign exchange.
Saying the processing plant will make the bangus produced in Dagupan and Pangasinan distinct from the rest of bangus produced in other parts of the country, Lim believes the project will be a big boon to local fish farmer-producers as well as traders.
Aware of the importance of the project, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo gave P10 million of the P50 million she promised for the project when she addressed the Bangus Congress organized by the city in 2003.
Arroyo however emphasized that the P40 million would not come in cash but in the form of machinery to be provided by China as part of a soft loan granted by the Chinese government to the Philippine government.
Arroyo inquired about the processing plant from Lim when she and family were having lunch at Tondaligan Park here last Monday on their way to Baguio to spend their holidays.
Lim told the President that the project has not yet started because the P10 million released by her last year was not enough to start even the site development for the project.
The mayor said since this did not materialize through the partnership between the city and national governments, he tapped some investors to do the project themselves on a one-hectare lot in barangay Bonuan Binloc.
The city will lease the land to the private investors who, in order to complete the project, would import the needed machinery from Europe, Lim declared.
Lim said it was the Department of Agriculture in fact, during the time of Secretary Leonardo Montemayor, that made the project study on the bangus processing plant and recommended the amount of P150 million as project cost.
