MinDA to put up Caraga area office, the first in Mindanao

MinDA Dir. Jake Miranda
Photo credit: pcavelino

This came, upon active consultations with Surigao City’s Jake Miranda, who is now the Director and overall representative of the Mindanao business sector at the same agency.

Dir. Miranda, in the spirit of volunteerism will endeavor to establish the office without any cost to government until the approval of the official planned budget. The office shall be made accessible to everyone requiring the agency’s services.

In a related development, Sec. Antonino and Miranda, inspired by the old trading links between the Philippines and China, have also began talking about initiating a formal study to establish a Caraga-Cagayan de Oro-China Trade Corridor, as these areas are presently trading commercial goods and mining exports.

MinDA Sec. Lualhati Antonino

Much akin to BIMP-EAGA which stands for Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines-East Asia Growth Corridor, for Southern Mindanao, the Caraga and Northern Mindanao regions are strategically located as gateways with commercial seaports and accessibility to all other forms of transport. These provide good reasons to explore this possibility.

MinDA’s end goal is to create a trading network for Caraga and Northern Mindanao to assert themselves as one of the leading centers for trade ensuring progress of the economy of these regions and the Mindanao island as a whole.

Businessmen across Mindanao have also requested that a formal MinDA board meeting be conducted during the Mindanao Business Conference in Pagadian City on September 7 to September 9, 2011, to ensure that government and business come together during Mindanao’s most important business convention. Miranda added that this will provide the ideal venue and time for both sectors to discuss the pertinent issues in Mindanao as government officials and businessmen will be present on this conference.

Caraga region was recently identified by several government agencies as the poorest region in Mindanao and the whole country. The most recent collected data released by the National Statistical and Coordination Board (NSCB) has shown that Caraga was the poorest among the country’s 17 regions with poverty incidence at 39.8 percent, a step back from its modest improvement in 2006 being the second poorest next to Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

MinDA’s commitment as well as Miranda’s appointment are steps to aiding Caraga get back on its feet. (FEA/PIA-Surigao del Norte)

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