The fall of the industrial giant

(Part two)

Looking at the statistics, there actually was a sudden surge in the number of business establishments that opened right after NSC’s closure. According to the Permits and Licenses Division of the City Mayor’s Office, 1,405 new businesses opened in the year 2000. But then the figure dropped to unusually low levels – 687 – the next year, then 747 in 2001.

Why so? An official in charge of issuing the licenses said these were actually former NSC employees who just received their fat separation fees and eager to go into business. But the wage earners that they had been for decades, they did not have the entrepreneurial skills.

Among them was Francisco, who teamed up with a few other former NSC employees to open up a restaurant right across St. Michael’s Cathedral and beside the St. Michael’s College in the middle of town. Despite being in a prime spot in Iligan’s business district, the business flopped.

George Hamoy, a former industry executive who went into the meat industry after retirement, said the economic fallout affected his business, too. Right after NSC’s closure, he said that customers who used to buy prime cuts in his Monterey meat shop were now buying nothing but bones.

The banking sector also noticed a slow down of business after NSC’s closure. "There was growth, but way below the boom years of the mid-1990s," says Leonardo Solon Jr., branch manager of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. and president of the Iligan Bankers Association.

He said the continued increase, albeit minimal, in deposits at that time could be attributed to the fact that businessmen chose to keep their money in the banks rather than risk losing them in some business ventures.

The War

Iligan fell on its knees with NSC’s closure. But yet another major blow drove Iligan to the canvas floor – the war in 2000.

In mid-March, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front attacked the town center of Kauswagan in Lanao del Norte, just 15 kilometers away from Iligan. They occupied the municipal hall, and herded Kauswagan residents in the town auditorium.

In response, then President Joseph Estrada declared an "all out war" against the MILF. Helicopters and Air Force bombers hovered over Iligan, and residents here felt the ground shake with every bomb dropped as the war spilled over to the towns of Linamon and Baloi, which share borders with Iligan .

The Tinago Residence Inn, one of Iligan’s famous tourist destinations situated near Tinago Falls right at the border with Linamon, temporarily closed the facility. It eventually went bankrupt, to be resuscitated much later by a small cooperative without its major attractions, like a mini-zoo, convention hall, a restaurant and cottages.

Formula For Disaster

Iligan’s march toward industrialization started with the construction of the first hydroelectric plant at the foot of the majestic Maria Cristina Falls in the early 1950s. Soon enough, the cheap electricity offered by the hydro plant attracted heavy manufacturing industries to Iligan’s shores.

First was the Maria Cristina Fertilizer Plant, then came the steel, cement, chemical, flour industries and the coconut oil mills, among others.

The National Power Corp. expanded its operations and built more hydro plants along the 36-km stretch of the Agus River that runs all the way to Marawi City. Now, the six hydro plants along the Agus River supply about 80 percent of Mindanao’s energy requirements.