SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique –All 18 municipalities of Antique have already established their respective Negosyo Center (NC), according to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) here.
Antique is the first province in Western Visayas and second to Biliran in Eastern Visayas to complete the establishment of the centers.
“We had a marathon establishment of the remaining NCs so that there will be NC staff to assist the Shared Service Facilities (SSF) to be implemented,” DTI Antique provincial director Mercedes Young said during a press conference Thursday afternoon.
DTI data showed that this year, the Regional Technical Working Group has approved 19 Shared Service Facilities (SSF) in Antique amounting to PHP32.221 million, with the equipment scheduled to be delivered in November.
Young added the NC in the capital town of San Jose de Buenavista, the first to be established in 2016, will now serve as coordination center for the other NCs in the province.
“With the NCs, the business name registration has increased. In Barbaza (4th municipality in Antique province) the micro, small and medium entrepreneurs (MSME) before found it hard to go to the DTI provincial office to apply,” Arnel B. Oliveros, NC Antique business counselor V, said in the press conference.
The NC staff or business counselors, who are DTI employees, are also being capacitated so they would be able to render service trainings like seminar on entrepreneurship, financial literacy, simple bookkeeping and others to their MSME clients.
The NC staff could also assist DTI in networking with the local government unit and conduct regular monitoring of basic and prime commodities.
Each center based in a municipality has one staff, except for the bigger towns like San Jose de Buenavista, Sibalom and Culasi, which have more than one personnel to attend to their clients.
In terms of business name registration, DTI through the NCs, has registered 2,633 businesses as of September 2018; higher than the 1,944 registered in 2017 and 1,402 in 2016.
The NCs first opened in San Jose de Buenavista, Valderrama, Tibiao, Pandan and Caluya in 2016 and Patnongon, Libertad, Sebaste, Culasi, Sibalom and Hamtic in 2017.
For this year, particularly last September, the NCs were opened in Anini-y, Belison, Bugasong, San Remigio, Barbaza, Laua-an, and Tobias Fornier. (Annabel Consuelo Petinglay/PNA)
