Construction retailer reaps positive gains amid crisis

CEBU, Philippines - Blessed with a consumer base that has established sound investments in the real estate industry, a retail chain for construction materials claims it continued to reap positive gains despite the global economic crisis.

“Home owners who are usually composed of overseas Filipino workers and their families are still coming over to our stores because they were able to invest their money into sound investments like housing so it seems as if the crisis has not affected us in a way,” said Maria Cyrina C. Pascual, product and development manager of the Cebu Home and Builders Centre, the company behind retail chains Builders Depot and Showroom in Mandaue and Mactan.

She said that the continued optimism of the market is translated in their positive sales which increased over last year’s projection.

She also said that if they base their perception on the industry based on their sales performance for the first five months of the year, they would say that there has been no slowdown so far.

“We can still say that here in Cebu there is still a construction boom despite the crisis because aside from existing projects, new projects are being built and these new investments include residential such as high rise condominiums and subdivisions as well as hotels and resorts all over the province,” said Pascual.

She said that the bulk of construction projects focus on the residential as well as the hospitality industry as this reflects the continually growing tourism industry in the province that is helping the industry to stay afloat.

“The demand for construction is still there. Bigger businessmen are now targeting OFWs who have been abroad for a long time and were able to save and are now ready to invest,” said Pascual.

Even one of their suppliers White Horse Ceramic Industries, one of the reputable factories of ceramics in the world continued to see optimism in the country’s construction sector.

Regional manager Lawrence Lim said in another interview that as indicated by their steady increase of sales, they have noted that the Philippines’ construction industry seems to be quite resilient to the global crisis.

“We have seen that the construction sector of many countries around the world have been badly hit by the crisis but the Philippines seem unaffected. Our indicators of this observation is the steady pace of our growth in the country in terms of our increasing sales for the past years we have been doing business in the country,” said Lim.

Cebu Oversea Hardware Co. Inc., the mother company of Cebu Home and Builders have 50 distributors around the country and aside from their two showrooms in Cebu, they have five in Manila and soon they will open a new Expo showroom in Parkmall as well as a Better Living Showroom in Baliwag, Bulacan. — Rhia de Pablo