Bizmen on Mactan Island brace for 12,000 job losses

Written by Wilfredo Rodolfo III / Reporter

Tuesday, 03 March 2009 23:57

LOCAL businessmen on Mactan Island in Cebu are bracing for at least 12,000 job losses this year as exporters and manufacturers in the city’s three economic zones continue to suffer the effects of the recession. Mactan Island Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Efraim Pelaez Jr. said the group estimates that companies would retrench up to 25 percent of their work force as orders from abroad dwindle. “Everybody’s having problems managing their inventories and canceling orders,” Pelaez said. “We must think that people abroad are the ones buying the furniture by Dedon and Maitland-Smith [furniture companies] and even the printers of Lexmark.” He said Maitland-Smith alone, one of the four biggest locators at the Mactan Economic Zone 1, has retrenched 750 casual employees and 150 regular workers as demand for high-end furniture mostly from the US declined. The numbers do not include support economies like subcontractors, who are also relying on the production scale of the locators on Mactan. Pelaez, however, said that unlike other regions in the Philippines, Cebu is in a much better situation because of two “sunshine industries”— business-process outsourcing (BPO) and tourism, which are still experiencing robust growth. He said the chamber is now preparing a program to train displaced manufacturing workers to work as chambermaids or support staff for hotels and resorts on Mactan which are continually building and expanding. “We have committed that we [chamber] can take care of the tourism sector and leave the BPO to the others,” he said. He explained business chambers have pledged to further strengthen the two growing industries to keep the Cebu economy going. “We are lucky we are insulated somewhat because of tourism and BPO and there are still some room for growth there,” he said.