CIPC eyes tele-presence facility to promote province to investors

CEBU, Philippines - The establishment of Globe Telecom’s tele-presence facility in Cebu, is expected to help the overseas promotion activities of the City, as the Cebu Investment and Promotions Center (CIPC) plans to partner with Globe to utilize the technology in attracting investors.

CIPC managing director Joel Mari S.Yu expressed interest to ink partnership with Globe Telecom for its tele-presence facility, as Cebu City promotion’s arm has limited budget to conduct overseas promotions.

“We still have to talk with Globe in this plan. This [tele-presence facility] help us reach out to investors in other countries, without spending so much money,” said Yu in an interview.

Located at the ground floor of Globe Telecom IT Plaza at the Asia Town IT Park, in Lahug, the facility allows enterprises to connect to colleagues and partners all over the world using three 65-inch full high definition plasma screens and spatial audio.

Providing an experience of a close to real round-table meeting, the Tele-Presence facility provides a cost cutting opportunity for businesses and business executives in terms of spending travel money, and time.

According to Yu, Cebu could present its investment and tourism attractions to foreign investors, without going physical to their respective countries, unlike in the past.

CIPC, aside from its task to promote the 300-hectare South Road Properties (SRP0, is also asked to focus its promotional events on boosting the advantage of Cebu as the Business Process Outsourcing and Information Technology (BPO-IT) destination, as well as tourism.

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama said earlier that the Cebu City government has allocated additional budget to aid the existing promotion programs CIPC, and primarily to beef up its programs on attracting more BPO-IT investors.

With the Tele-presence Facility, Yu said Cebu is expected to save a lot of travel money for promotions, and this could be utilized in other programs.

Yu said that there is no problem in helping the promotion for BPO/IT and tourism for the City.

However, the agency is also needing help in terms of funding, as it is only getting P3 million a year from the City government’s coffer since 1997.

Because of the shortage of operational funds, Yu said CIPC had to cut their trips in participating international promotion events, and limited to only serving the visiting investors to Cebu.

Aside from intensifying its marketing programs to attract more BPO and IT investments to the City, Yu said Rama has also expanded the role of CIPC to help with the City Tourism Council, in creating sustainable tourism plan, strategies and actual tourism promotion.

However, according to Yu, in order for CIPC to accommodate this additional work-load, CIPC should be given additional funding of at least P3 million per year more.

“We need at least P6 million annual budget for us to do these promotional works in both investments and tourism,” Yu said. (FREEMAN)