Blog 7: Training and Observation under Ateneo School of Government

FINAL TOUCHES OF THE DESK REVIEW
(7th week: February 22-24, 2011)

Our last task in ASoG is to write a synthesis out of the desk review that we accomplished.

Here's one of the syntheses that I wrote for the ILO study:

Synthesis

These sets of data were gathered and serve as the desk review or the secondary data in assessing capacities and training needs of LGU’s on Local Economic Development (LED): An Assessment of four provinces in the Philippines. These related facts will further supplement the undertaking of the said assessment. The amalgamations of data are the following:

The people of Masbate are known as best in agriculture, history, politics and geography means. The province is composed of 1 city, 20 municipalities and a total number of 550 barangays. All towns of Masbate are adjacent to the aquatic resources.

The population growth of the province has been erratic due to lack of economic opportunity especially on its city. Masbate City has the most number of people recorded along with its municipalities. Next to it is the municipalities of Aroroy and Cawayan. On the entirety, 15.8% of which is classified into the youth sector. Male youths are of great number than female.

It was projected by the National Statistics Office that the population of the Masbate by 2015 will raise at 960, 600 from 870,200 of 2010. This indicates that the growing population of the province is in more need of the substantial necessitates especially to those who belong to the youth sector.

On the business environment, banking and insurance, food establishments and other commercial activities brought some investments to the city between year 1996 and 2001. The construction industry on the other hand has also generated a great amount of income in the same period and absorbed the greatest number of unemployed workers in the process. The highest investment was generated in trading industry through retail and wholesale activities that make almost 40% if the city’s population employed. Manufacturing-related activities are limited to bakery operations, fish processing and some handicrafts and furniture shops.

The banking industry in the province is highly communal mostly in the City. Still, remittance companies were also present in the other towns of Masbate. The reason for the increasing number of banks and pawnshops in Masbate was because of the huge number of work migrants originally from Masbate and now working in other places, particularly Manila and abroad. They send money to their families through money remittance companies on a regular basis.

The province has engraved a salient economic niche in the Philippines based on its thriving livestock and metallic mining industries. With these industries, the growth of the foundation is further assured. Its economy is largely dependent on the trading of livestock and fishery of the province. Its city serves as the intra-provincial distributor of goods entering the port of Masbate as well as the service and institutional center of the entire province.

Masbate has plenty of preferred investment areas. Among them are nursery operation, mango production, and processing corn and feed grain production, industrial tree, cutflower production, and gold production, cattle fattening, wine breeding, broiler production, layer production, lapu-lapu culture, crab fattening, agro-industrial estate, feedmills, sea transportation, airlines, bus terminals with amenities like malls, shopping centers, passengers waiting area, comfort rooms, power plant, modernized printing/publishing center, rural bank, local travel agency, water sewerage system, ship building/breaking and repair, food processing, leathercraft, non-metal craft, coconut production and by-products processing, organic fertilizer production, pharmaceutical products, manpower placement agency, and tourist estate. Establishment of tourism accommodation facilities like hotels, resorts, apartels, pension houses, and tourist inns are also preferred that will definitely alleviate the employment rate of the province.

Major institutions of higher learning in the province of Masbate mainly offer health care services, food and beverage, commercial cooking, automotive mechanic, welding and computer-related courses. These courses offered by schools and technical training institutions were geared mostly to the need of the overseas labor market.

The government programs at the provincial level have its visible program for youth development. These programs mainly focus on trainings on computer literacy, entrepreneurship mostly to in-school youth and livelihood projects funded by Department of Agriculture.

Masbate has its entrepreneurship opportunities that have the most chance of succeeding in as much as they respond to the current abundance of raw materials in specific localities in the province and a ready market exists for them. These entrepreneurship opportunities are fish and sea products processing, seaweed, aquaculture, bamboo, abaca, value-adding traditional agricultural crops (e.g.rice, coconut and corn), high value crops and food processing, livestock and fowl, trading, tourism and ecotourism and native arts and crafts.