Davao City - Investors confidence in the Davao region are not affected by the peace and order problem in Central Mindanao as shown by the total investments reaching P900million registered as of July 2008.

Engr. Gil Dureza, head of the Board of Investment Davao extension
office covering Region 9, 11 and 12 said that except for one investor
that deferred its project in Central Mindanao for Cavendish banana in
a 4,000 hectares area with P8 billion investments, all the rest
proceeded and availed of the incentives given by the BOI.

He said this would only indicate that investors' confidence is there
and are not afraid of locating despite the problem.

In fact, he revealed that on the average BOI conducts two to three
times weekly briefing to foreigners.

The area for the banana project he said is within PALMA (Pigcawayan,
Aleosan, Libungan Midsayap, Alamada) where there is an ongoing
conflict the reason why the Filipino investor deferred the project.

But another Japanese investor is looking at the PALMA area although
Dureza said they have not inspected the area and because of the
ongoing problem BOI would look for other sites perhaps in Davao del Sur.

They would also need 4,000 hectares where investment would be about P8
billion, he said.

Dureza said once this project is realized they would be able to hit
higher this year by 10 percent as against the P8 billion generated
investments in 2007 even as he said that the Japanese investor showed
great interest in locating.

In the meantime Dureza said the registered investments as of July 2008
included the P400 million expansion of Flying V, P174 M A & J
Processing in General Santos City, P6M Hog Tech Corporation also of
General Santos City, P4 M Monkayo Commodity Corp for banana chips
production, P260M low-cost housing project of HLC Corp in Davao City.

Other than these investments he said they also facilitated the
requirements of nationally registered projects like the condominium
projects of Filinvest and Consunji and the business process
outsourcing of Western Wats and HLC call center.

Dureza meanwhile said that they plan to conduct promotional activity
for the tourism sector of Davao del Sur and Davao Oriental in Boracay
and Thailand.

He said tourism is among the investment priority areas and their
proposed activity in Thailand will be in cooperation with the
provincial and local government units and the Foreign Trade Attaches.