BACOLOD CITY – Mayor Salvador Escalante Jr. revealed that more investments are pouring into Cadiz City in Negros Occidental.
ESCALANTE
Escalante, in a media interview during the culmination of the Golden Dinagsa Festival on Sunday, January 28, said that the city is being envisioned as an agricultural hub for Metro Manila through the Cadiz seaport.
Escalante said that local products from Cadiz will be transported to Manila through the city’s commercial port and Batangas port.
Investors were able to see the potential of Cadiz and neighboring cities and towns, he added.
Escalante said they are producing almost two million heads of chicken and 120 million heads of cattle a year from backyard production.
“It’s a big potential. Just imagine an agricultural land is rare for investment,” he added.
In support of this, he said the city invested in developing concrete roads a few years ago, to be able to open a marginal land.
Escalante is hoping that by the end of February, the farthest barangay in the city could already be accessed already through a new road.
He said that before, this barangay could be reached in almost a day, but with the road development, people could be there in 30 minutes.
Escalante said that they are also planning to expand their commercial seaport. “We are ready. We’re working on it, hopefully we can start by this year or early next year,” he added.
Escalante said that the city has always been an open city in business and everything.
“We welcome everybody and see to it that we could give what the visitors expect,” the mayor said, adding that they have been very meticulous in welcoming guests.
Escalante said that a group is also targeting to plant coffee and coconut trees in a 1,500-hectare land. “That’s about 1.2 million trees all over,” he added.
The mayor said that currently, about 100,000 fruit-bearing trees are being planted, covering almost 100 hectares of land.
The city is optimistic that the proposed 100-megawatt (MW) floating solar farm will further cement them as the renewable energy (RE) capital of the province.
At present, the city is host to Home Vena Energy's 132-MW Helios Solar Power Plant (HSPP) that occupies a land area of 176 hectares in Barangay Tinampaan.
HSPP is the biggest in Southeast Asia and the seventh largest in the world.