COTABATO CITY – Chinese investors are set to pour in some PhP4-billion worth of investments in this city this year with the inclusion of a modern airport, seaport, and sports complex among major infrastructure projects.
On Monday, the five-man visiting investment team from the Chinese Engineering Construction Company (CECC), which had been in this city the past two days, inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Mayor Frances Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi for the realization of the projects under a Public-Private Partnership scheme.
Under the MOU, the CECC would invest and finance for the projects for continuous development while the city government provide necessary assistance and information through a technical working group to ensure the success of the projects.
The CECC has eyed the sprawling areas of Barangays Tamontaka 3 and Kalanganan 2 to build its state-of-art airport and seaport projects, respectively, over a combined amount of Php1.4-B upon approval of the national government.
Over the past two years, consultants hired by the city government have carefully studied the projects to ensure its feasibility and capital returns to the investors. Guiani-Sayadi said the new city airport would not hamper the operations of the Awang airport in adjacent Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao, as the main target of the city airport is to decongest the current Awang airfield operation for its services to the Central Mindanao area.
The proposed seaport, meanwhile, is expected to bring more traffic in the incoming and outgoing goods for Cotabato City and its neighboring towns and provinces.
New road networks serving the new mega-projects are also in the pipeline, the mayor said.
“We saw that this city has big potentials and could make huge revenues through big investments,” Bin Liu, CECC chief executive officer and head of delegation, said in Chinese and translated by an interpreter.
“With the coming of the Chinese investors, I am sure that others will slowly follow. Eventually, we will be able to prove that Cotabato City is a force to reckon with. They just wait and see,” Guiani-Sayadi, for her part, said.
More so, Liu, after discovering that this city is also home to many businessmen of Chinese descent, expressed his intent to build a sports complex-cum-technical training center, out of his own personal account, at Barangay Tamontaka Mother here.
Once agreement is finalized, the construction of the city airport and seaport will be the biggest projects, by far, that a foreign company would be undertaking in this part of the country.
Local businessmen have also expressed enthusiasm on the projects citing that the proposed undertakings would boost the growing economy of the city. (Noel Punzalan/PNA)
