CLARK FREEPORT – Move aside, Mabalacat City. Your collateral of being “Makati north of Manila” is being snatched – with the most valid reasons – by Porac.
Porac, this province’s largest town in terms of land area, maybe likened to the legendary bird phoenix rising from the ashes. In just a little over two decades, the town that got the brunt of the devastation wrought by Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991 over a large swath of the Central Luzon province appears to be back on its feet.
And more than this, it has now joined the fi erce competition for local and foreign investors. At the rate things are going, the 419-year old municipality which bore the brunt of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions appears to be making
headway both in terms of shedding off the negative impact of the fiery pyroclastic materials that blanketed it and the surging lahar fl ows, resurrecting a vibrant economy and catching the interest of Makati’s “big boys” led by the Ayala Group.
Mayor Condralito dela Cruz said in last Friday’s weekly media forum Balitaan of the Capampangan in Media,
Inc. (CAMI), the Bale Balita here, that the conglomerate has finalized its development plans for a 400-hectare property in Hacienda Dolores, part of the 1,000 hectares of land it earlier acquired from the Puyat family.
Barring negative factors, actual work on the development of the property will begin early next year, expected to prompt brisk business activity, as well as the creation of more job opportunities for the town’s residents and tax income for the municipal government in the succeeding years.
When completed, the Ayala project will feature a commercial business district, state-of-the-art mass transit system, high-end residential enclaves, upscale educational institutions, as well as modern water and power utilities.
Last year, the town’s revenues (including its internal revenue allocation or IRA) reached P90 million and this is forecast to hit P120 million this year, Dela Cruz said, noting that the Ayala venture alone would greatly boost Porac’s revenue and employment generating capacity.
The mayor was also optimistic that these developments would spur a rapid growth in the town’s current population of some 60,000 spread over 29 barangay units, five of which are upland areas.
Dela Cruz said during the forum, hosted by CAMI in partnership with Clark Development Corp. (CDC) and Social Security System (SSS), that other business groups have also expressed interest in developing the town’s water
resources, including the generation of hydro and solar-powered utilities to meet the projected increase in demand with the growth of residential as well as business population, Among these potential investors are the Ayala- controlled Manila Water and the Aboitiz group.
The town’s leadership has partnered with the Ayalas to draw up a medium-to-long term economic development
blueprint for the modernization of Porac and its evolution into a business haven and a high-profile eco-tourism destination, Dela Cruz said.
“They (Ayala Group) have the know-how and financial muscle to bring this plan into a reality,” the local executive said in explaining the partnership with the business conglomerate. He said Porac is open into any arrangement
with corporate entities and serious investors so long as these arrangements would redound to the benefit of the town, its residents and Pampanga itself.
What’s attracting Makati’s “big players” to Porac? Dela Cruz said it’s the town’s vast open land awaiting development; its inexhaustible water resources; its cool climate in the uplands and natural beauties such as
its three waterfalls (Miyamit, Quelly and Dara) that indicate a huge reserve of spring water and healthy forest, its accessibility and its people.
Porac was for some time bereft of human inhabitants after Pinatubo’s eruption, the mayor related, adding that
the destruction was so intense that even the town’s natural resources (trees, plants and animals in the uplands) were totally wiped out.
The super-heated sand spewed by the volcano incinerated everything and buried a vast expanse of inhabited communities and upland forest lands, he added. But what was initially considered as destructive, the sand that descended in 1991 on Porac became a blessing for the town’s residents, who quarried the sand for sale as raw material to construction outfi ts or turned the same into hollow blocks and other construction- related materials, which helped trigger their recovery from the major setback and normalization of their lives.
For the moment, the town still depend much on agriculture, trading of farm products and sand quarrying for generating employment and revenues, Dela Cruz said. But he added that “soon, Porac would realize its make-over from a sleepy town into the ‘Makati of the North’.”
