“My challenge was how do I make our town progressive? What I did was I anchored the equally important purpose of a local government unit to its corporate function.” That was the biggest challenge expressed by Ramon Valecaria Guico III when he took over as governor of Pangasinan last year.
“We have set clear directions for investors and instituted policies that would be beneficial to them. So, we established the Provincial Economic Development Office and the Pangasinan Investment Authority, which will be the investment arm of the province,” said Guico, who has also served as a member of the House of Representatives and as mayor of his hometown, Binalonan.
At every stage of his professional life, Guico brings with him a deeply rooted sense of idealism that embraces new ways of performing his job, while letting loose of old, deeply entrenched bureaucratic processes in the country’s third-largest provincial economy.
“When I was mayor of Binalonan in 2010, the town’s budget was 92 million pesos (around $1.6 million). The budget for 2023 is 450 million pesos (around $7.9 million). This was achieved in just 13 years. That's my model and it's what I’m following now as governor of Pangasinan,” Guico said.
“That’s why I established the first economic zone in the province. We got Sumitomo Corporation pre-pandemic, which was at the time the largest Sumitomo manufacturing plant in the country. The plant assembles wiring harnesses for Japanese electric vehicles. Currently, phase one of the plant operates with 3,000 employees. There are still phase two and phase three expansions to come, which will eventually create 10,000 jobs in Pangasinan,” he added.
Deriving its name from its main product, the province hopes to revitalize traditional salt-making after it asked the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to operate a 473-hectare salt farm in the town of Bolinao, which will hopefully produce 25,000 metric tons of salt every year.
That salt farm is the largest of its kind in the Philippines, according to the governor, who is a licensed aircraft and helicopter pilot and the founder of a small airline company and flying school. Guico also said the province will build an airport in Bolinao.
Capitalizing on the province’s abundant mineral resources, Guico launched automated digital apps to modernize and boost the collection of revenues from mining and quarrying operators.
“Previously, our projected income from river quarrying was only 12 million pesos a year (around $211,000). That's small for a province as large as Pangasinan. We implemented the new quarry ordinance that included the utilization of automated apps and were able to collect 102 million pesos ($1.8 million) since then. Now, we're projecting between 200 to 300 million pesos ($3.5 and $5.3 million) in annual collections,” he said.
To strengthen Pangasinan’s connectivity with Manila and the rest of Luzon, the governor announced the development of a modern intermodal bus network, as well as the construction of the Pangasinan Link Expressway or PLEX.
“The East-West Expressway is going to be a joint venture with San Miguel Corporation. Phase one, which we call the Pangasinan Link Expressway, will be a 32-km expressway that will link Binalonan to the provincial capital of Lingayen and will cut travel time from an hour and a half to between 25 and 30 minutes,” Guico said.
To protect Pangasinan’s vital agricultural land and spare the province from mismanaged urban planning, Guico plans to build affordable high-rise housing.
This expansive vision of development comes with an open invitation.
“Our basic message is whether you move here, raise a family, or place your investment here, Pangasinan is a place of great opportunities. We have a government that provides unique support to investors. We do our best to run things like a corporation,” Guico said.
