Philexport pre-selects firmsto qualify for P150M grant

CEBU, Philippines - Philexport Cebu has already started selecting export companies who can avail of the P150 million grant from the Dutch government through the Center for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries (CBI-Netherlands).

In an interview with Philexport Cebu executive director Fred Escalona, he said that the grant will be distributed equally among three selected sectors, and that CBI-Netherlands, and PhilExport-Cebu will lead the selection of the company beneficiaries from across the Philippines.

Initially, there are already 12 pre-selected firms under the food ingredients sector, seven from engineering and metal industry, while ongoing selection is being done for the tourism sector.

In Cebu, three firms in the engineering and metal sector are now being pre-selected, said Escalona.

In the next few months, Philexport Cebu targets to pick 15 companies to get technical support from CBI-Netherlands, including consultancy, development and business support, among others.

Escalona added that although this grant is intended to help a total of 45 companies, 15 from each sector nationwide, PhilExport-Cebu is commissioned to lead this new program.

He said these sectors need to get technical help from the European experts, considering that the quality system in the European Union is high, and that exporters need to understand the standard of the market.

Part of the program’s component is to find buyers from Europe for these beneficiary companies, through a matching system based on the database of CBI-Netherlands.

Qualified companies are those that employ not more than 50 employees, and must be wholly Filipino-owned.

CBI-Netherlands has been supporting the export sector through its partnership with Philexport Cebu since 2006, and had already given an average of half a billion pesos in grant to the sector, said Escalona.

The selected companies will also be able to participate in the ExPro training under the program that will include an all-expense-paid workshop to be held in Netherlands this coming November 2013.

CBI-Netherlands is an agency of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Established in 1971 in order to support producers/ exporters to get foothold in the Netherlands market, support to Business Support organizations in improving their capabilities and to act as a matchmaker between suppliers and buyers.

In 1991, the activities were expanded to EU and since 1998 it has become an Agency. /JOB (FREEMAN)