CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga—“Tons of benefits” await the people of Central Luzon through the Clark Green City (CGC) project.
“It [CGC] will definitely strengthen the position of Region 3 as the country’s newest growth hub, leveraging also on the existing gains of the Clark Special Economic Zone,” Bases Conversion and Development Authority Assistant Vice President for Corporate Communications Leilani Macasaet said.
Accordingly, with the government committed to help enhance road networks and other transportation infrastructure to and from the region, the presence of CGC will further lure businesses to the area, helping drive economic growth by providing employment opportunities and generating new sources of revenue for the local government units.
“Among the benefits are in the areas of agricultural produce, population, gross regional domestic product, tourism and real estate,” she said.
Known as the “Fertile Central Plains” and the “Rice Granary of the Philippines”, given the abundance of rice and vegetables in the region, Central Luzon produces three-fourths of the country’s total rice harvest, in addition to sugarcane and corn.
She said that, aside from being a producer of agricultural products, the region is also the Philippines’s biggest hog and poultry producer, contributing to 18 percent and 26 percent of the national output, respectively.
“Based on the 2015 data of the Philippine Statistics Authority, Region 3 is the country’s third-largest region in terms of population size, with approximately 11.22 million people. It increases by 1.95 percent annually, on average, in six years,” Macasaet said.
She said Central Luzon is home to the second-largest source of labor (4.3 million people), with the main industry employers in the industrial manufacturing sector and the business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry.
“In terms of the gross regional domestic product of the region, the accelerated growth brought about by the industry sector grew the economy by 4.6 percentage points, accelerating from 4.4 percent in 2013 to 9 percent in 2014,” Macasaet said.
She said that, compared to the information-technology (IT) facilities in Metro Manila and Metro Cebu, Metro Clark is the only established IT-BPO hub still enjoying tax incentives for new IT parks and facilities developers.
With the increase in the number of expatriates, Central Luzon has the third-highest number of foreign-citizen households, with approximately 16,000.
Multiple value investments, particularly in the economic and free-port zones of Clark and Subic, translate to economic expansion in Central Luzon, generating trade and employment opportunities.
“Through this, visitor arrivals increased by approximately 21 percent at 3.1 million visitors in 2014,” she said. The region is becoming home to the expansion projects of real-estate developers outside Metro Manila.
Several local developers already have their presence in Central Luzon, particularly Ayala Land Inc., Alveo Land Corp., Amaia Land Corp., Vista Land and Landscapes Inc., Robinsons Land Corp., Communities North Inc. and FilinvestLand, among others.
“The rise in real-estate developments in Central Luzon is a mark of the high purchasing power of the population, as well as presence of higher land values,” Macasaet said.
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Bulacan’s economy is very much atteched and interconnected to Metro Manila as its extension in the North.