Mitsui to invest over $1 B in Caraga region

One of Japan's sogo soshas plans to invest more than $1 billion (P40 billion) to develop a 120,000-hectare tree plantation and an environmental industrial complex in the Caraga region.

In a meeting with Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Antonio Cerilles, officers of the Caraga Forest Plantation Project (CFPP) said they and Mitsui and Co. Ltd. of Japan plan to start the project within the year.

The investment, they said, supports the 25-year Philippine master plan for forest development, which envisages the establishment of new pulpmills to minimize the country's pulp importation as well as the retooling and establishment of new wood industries for export and domestic purposes.

CFPP officers informed Cerilles that they would develop a tree plantation in the Caraga region covering 120,000 hectares of open and denuded areas in the declared tree corridor. About 30 million trees of Acacia mangium, mahogany and other indigenous tree species will be planted per year in the 120,000-hectare tree plantation, they said.

The tree plantation project, they said, not only supports the thrust of the Estrada administration to establish timber corridors in Mindanao, but is also intended to provide sustainable yield of timber and non-timber products for domestic and foreign markets.

At least 5,000 people are expected to be employed under the tree plantation venture.

The project intends to produce 600,000 metric tons of pulp annually as well as other wood by-products such as wood chips and usable wood wastes. These will be the raw materials which will be used by the environmental industrial complex which would consist of a complex chipping plant, pulp mill, woodwaste mill and other ancillary plants. -- Mary Ann Reyes