MCCI gears up for green growth" in MBM

CEBU, Philippines - With its theme, “Reaching Far and Beyond,” this year’s upcoming Mandaue Business Month celebration is gearing up towards greater heights as the Mandaue of Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) reaches out to other sectors outside their boundaries to champion a new direction in line with attaining green growth.

During the recent launching of the Mandaue Business Month that is slated for the month of August, MCCI received a collective amount of P4.5 million pledges from the Province of Cebu and the City of Mandaue.

The Province of Cebu as represented by Governor Gwen Garcia pledged three million while the City of Mandaue gave out P1.5 million support funds for all the activities in line for this year’s MBM.

In an interview with MCCI president Eric Ng Mendoza he said that the funding will be used to finance the activities that they have prepared for this year’s MBM.

He said that it has been their Chamber’s vision to present relevant topics to the business community and this year they will be organizing One Cebu Business Summit which will highlight three relevant topics that will tackle insights on complex challenges and innovative solutions.

The topics to be discussed during the summit will include: the global economic outlook which will highlight where the Philippines will be heading; corporate growth strategies and measures on how to reconcile green growth with business growth.

“We all know what businesses are going through today. We launch this month-long event without hesitation because we believe that our ship, the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry is sea-worthy. The event that we have laid out will showcase strong partnership of the public and private sector in providing innovative solutions to the complex challenges that we are facing and raise the bar of excellence in the conduct of our programs,” said Mendoza.

He said that the topics that they have lined-up for this year’s MBM are effective and relevant topics worth discussing especially during these pressing times.

He said that their chamber is heading towards a new direction of advocating a green economy through espousing sustainable concepts like organic farming.

“Organic farming can give higher yields at higher selling price however we still have insufficient knowledge and information about this. Although here in the province, the governor has already started an organic farming program,” said Mendoza.

“Benchmarking is what we can do to turn around in this crisis. The formula for us now is to go back to basics. We have gotten destructive with negative news so we lose track but then here in Cebu, there are still a lot of things that could be done,” he added.

He said that during their upcoming forum, they will be inviting important guests from Brazil and Indonesia to talk about how we can recover and how we can employ best practices that will become a benchmark for Cebu to refocus its present development goals.

As for Mandaue City being a center for trade, Mendoza is foreseeing its potential in espousing organic farming.

“It is important for us to connect to the entire supply chain at this point. For us to regrow the economy, we have to go back to basics and embrace advancements in agriculture. In this endeavor, Mandaue Chamber will act as a catalyst to support Mandaue City as the industrialized center and distribution hub of the entire Visayas,” said Mendoza.

“Export is still there. But we have to have a niche and change our track, refocus and transform so we go to the service sector and be a solutions provider to help the economy turn around,” he added.