Page 25 - LM Confidential Issue September 2014

Spotlight
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SMALL TOWNS BOOM continued from page 22
Pasig River, Manila 1960’s
Puzzle
kilometers (9 miles) of new roads and widened the 16-kilometer highway to the airport. A 3,700-person convention center is being built for next year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings to be held in the city.
It’s a long way from the town Palmares- Fong yearned to escape from as a teenager. “Iloilo was a small, quiet town, everybody knew everybody,” she said. “I felt like I was in an aquarium, I wanted to be out in the ocean.”
When Manila-based Megaworld offered her the chance to become a sales director in Iloilo last year, it was her ticket home.
“I wanted to be able to say someday that I was part of this,” she said. Two of her childhood friends also returned from Manila this year, one to work in a family- run hotel and the other in a call center.
Iloilo’s growth is also fed by a tide of migration from surrounding villages. The United Nations estimates the Philippine population will grow 18 percent in the decade through 2020 to 110.4 million.
Other provincial cities in the archipelago of more than 7,000 islands are also benefiting, such as Cauayan in the north and Cagayan de Oro on the southern island of Mindanao. BDO Unibank Inc., the nation’s largest lender by assets, has opened more than half of its new branches outside Manila since 2013.
The regional boom is helping the national economy, which grew an average 7 percent in the past two years. The World Bank forecasts a 6.4 percent expansion this year, and 6.7 percent in 2015.
Rising provincial incomes also combat poverty in a nation where the World Bank estimates 42 percent of people live on less than $2 a day. Minimum wages in provinces are as low as 205 pesos a day, less than half the 429 pesos in Manila.
In Iloilo Business Park, plumber John Jadulos and his uncle are installing drains and pipes for the Richmonde Hotel. He’s hoping to get a job as kitchen, maintenance or housekeeping staff once the building is completed next year.
“Iloilo’s changing; it’s brimming with job opportunities now,” said Jadulos, 27, taking a break from his nine-hour shift. “Who knows? Next year I could be working in a hotel.”
Crossword
UMAC delivers Love
Photo shows the UMAC Express Cargo team that supported the ANCOP Walk which was held on August 24, 2014 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The project is doing a fund-raising activity in th whole to raise fund give needly childran in the Philippines education and to build homes for the poor. Shown in photo include UMAC Manager Anna Carina Eusebio, Patricia Baguisa, Karen Baguisa, and
Patrick Baguisa. For more information, please call 416 - 298 - 1274, Email: umactoronto@yahoo.ca. (St. Jamestown News Service, Romy Zetazate)
Answers on Page 26
SEPTEMBER 2014
L. M. Confidential
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