Accelerating Calamba’s Industrial Progress: Bright Prospects and Sizeable Problems

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Accelerating Calamba’s Industrial Progress:  Bright Prospects and Sizeable Problems

• By: Katrina Maquilan
• -Faculty Member, College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines Los Baños (AY 2008-2011)
• -Research Assistant, Third World Studies Center, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines DIliman (2007)

As the hometown of our renowned national hero Dr. Jose Rizal, Calamba has long enjoyed a special position of prestige in Philippine history. Such stature is in our time buttressed by Calamba’s solid reputation as a key city for business and trade in the CALABARZON  area.[1] Technoparks such as the Calamba Premier International Park, Light Industry and Science Park II, and Carmelray Industrial Park II emphasize the city’s role as a major investor hub in Laguna province. These technoparks along with the thriving business and commercial environment attract migrants looking for work from nearby cities and municipalities, who constantly add to Calamba’s population officially at 360,281 as of August 2007 according to the latest NSO census report released online.[2] According to this year’s nationwide opinion survey made by the Philippine Information Agency, Laguna ranks among investors’ top provinces of choice for their businesses.[3] In addition, Calamba City is considered as one of Laguna’s Primary Growth Areas and among the province’s top municipalities where urbanization is expected to accelerate, according to NEDA or the National Economic Development Authority. [4]

In order to live up to such a special role as a key driver of economic growth in the province, Calamba City has many advantages to continue to capitalize on, not least of them a very strategic location for trade and commerce in the Greater Manila Area. Calamba is conveniently connected to the National Capital Region via the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), and is at the crossroads of transport along the highly urbanized and industrialized gateway municipalities of Laguna, Cavite, and Batangas provinces such as Sta. Rosa City (Laguna), Carmona (Cavite) and Sto. Tomas (Batangas).

While “location is everything” is a given when planning a small-scale business start-up, such adage is obviously not enough in the world of public administration and local government planning, where trade as well as investor confidence is highly affected by the availability of good provincial roads for the transport of goods and exchange of services. Indeed, among the problems cited in Calamba’s Comprehensive Land Use and Development Plan or CLUDP for the years 2000 to 2015 is the absence of an extensive network of local roads that can handle the heavy traffic that goes with Calamba’s critical role as a major industrial and cargo transhipment center in Laguna and Southern Luzon.[5] Currently, traffic congestion is a perennial picture near and along urban centers and passenger convergence areas particularly during rush hours, as in the case of the National Road which links Calamba to Cabuyao and Sta. Rosa. Traffic congestion is also a tremendous problem in such areas as Crossing, Parian, and Checkpoint, which have a vast number of motorists coming into Laguna from the SLEX.

Traffic congestion is a big problem considering the city’s added value as a gateway between NCR and Laguna’s inner municipalities. Raw materials as well as food and agricultural products coming in from the province’s vast agricultural bastions in such areas as Los Baños and Calauan could bring down the cost of production in Calamba City’s industrial centers and technoparks. The plan offered in the city’s Comprehensive Land Use and Development Plan (2000 to 2015) to advance the utilization of Laguna de Bay for tourist transportation may also be expanded to help conquer the limits of land transportation for the purpose of commerce and trade. [6] Also essential in our time today is strategic inter- and intra-LGU (local government unit) planning at the municipal, provincial, and regional levels at the least. Multiparty politics aside, laws which take into careful account the importance of cooperation and partnerships among various cities and municipalities in the province and in South Luzon and between government and business associations must be put up as frameworks for governance of trade that is not so immediately hindered by the borders of political units. This would not just be for a more efficient transportation network, but also for a more encompassing incubation model for local businesses, in order to ensure that these would thrive in a highly interconnected, rapidly-changing, and globalized environment for industry. The goal is to further distribute the gains of foreign investment to the city’s entrepreneurial sector, making it more directly benefit from, and not set back by, the realities of transnational trade in the 21^st century.

Apart from economic cooperation, sustainable development is another code in contemporary business practice that no government seriously keen on further advancing economic growth could afford to overlook. Sustainable development takes place where care for industry goes hand in hand with care for the environment. The environment, in turn, sustains the resources necessary for industry. Who could forget the flooding of various areas of Calamba and in lakeshore Laguna post-typhoon Ondoy? Houses near Laguna de Bay were almost submerged underwater, many for months. Problems like these which could have been mitigated by scientific knowledge and environmental protection drastically set back even the most well formulated plans for local industrial growth and give the citizenry a sense of discontinuity. Hence we cannot discount the significance of the most up-to-date technical and technological expertise to help minimize the impact of disaster, especially since Calamba is a lakeside city. In 2000, the Sangguniang Bayan of Calamba approved an ordinance for zoning.[7] This must be respected. Formal and informal settlements and even commercial establishments in the areas intended for environmental protection must be relocated to help prevent the unwelcome repeats of post-typhoon experiences.

In Calamba’s Development Plan, the two areas deemed most crucial to maintaining the city’s stature as an industrial center is the development of its Information Technology and Logistics industries.[8] These high-value industries cannot endure in the absence of an educated class. Thus in order for Calamba City to continue to be a master of its industrial fate and the captain of its economic soul in the even more challenging times ahead, it is paramount that courses on science and technology that take into account the intricacies of the local economic terrain in the midst of the sea of globalization be promoted and institutionalized by the local and provincial government, in partnership with institutions of higher learning. But the big challenges ahead could not be genuinely resolved without first resolving the smaller ones of today, like the very basic problem of poor school facilities for elementary and high school. The deficiencies in the number of classrooms and the significant number of dilapidated classrooms in public schools, identified as among the city’s main social infrastructure problems in its Development Plan,[9] needs urgent attention. Educational investment is important: implementing any long-term plan for industrial growth, no matter how well designed it may be, would be impractical and futile without taking into account the words of the city’s most famous son who once said that “Youth is the hope of the Fatherland.”[10]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Castro, Ferdinand. “Laguna Ranks  Among Top Provinces for Investors.” Manila Bulletin. Online.

<http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/310882/laguna-ranks-among-top-provinces-investors>22 March 2011. 

Municipality of Calamba Ordinance No. 256 Series of 2000. “An Ordinance Adopting a Land

Development Guidance System for the Municipality of Calamba and Providing for the Administration, Enforcement and Amendment Thereof and for the Repeal of All Ordinances In Conflict Therewith.”

National Economic Development Authority and Urbis Philippines, Inc.Calamba Comprehensive Land

Use and Development Plan 2000-2015.

National Statistics Office. 2007 Census of Population. Official website.

<http://www.census.gov.ph/data/census2007/index.html>