Vol. XXII, No. 149 [ BusinessWorld Online ]
Monday, March 2, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
THE GOVERNMENT has offered to Thai businessmen the City of Samal in the Davao Region as a potential investment site for poultry and mariculture projects, the Agriculture department said in a press release yesterday.
The statement said that President Gloria M. Arroyo and Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap briefed a 38-member delegation of Thai businessmen on investment potentials in Samal City.
The delegation was led by Dhanin Chearavanoni, chairman and chief executive officer of the Bangkok-based Chaoroen Pokphand Group Co. Ltd., which is the biggest agribusiness conglomerate in Thailand and the fifth largest feed mill operator in the world. The businessmen were toured in a 2,000-hectare area in Talikud Island ideal for a possible poultry project, Agriculture Assistant Secretary Salvador S. Salacup said in the same statement.
Furthermore, government officials offered the potential investors an investment opportunity to develop a large part of the 200-hectare mariculture park in Samal.
Mariculture parks are sea areas where high-value fish like milkfish, red snapper, crablets, seabass, and seahorse are caged and raised.
"The Thais will still review their programs and their international partnerships," Mr. Salacup said in a phone interview. "We will communicate with them by the third week of March just to follow-up with the development proposal."
Since its launch in 2001, only 20 hectares of the P10-million, 200-hectare mariculture park has been developed by Davao-based agribusiness entrepreneurs into fish cages for bangus and other high-value marine species, Mr. Salacup said. — N. J. C. Morales
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