CDO boom and the next Ceboom

During my visit last week to Cagayan de Oro (CDO) City, the capital of Misamis Oriental province, for the wedding of my nephew, I finally saw the newly inaugurated Laguindingan International Airport near the coast of the municipality of Laguindingan in the same province.

The airport replaces the old Lumbia Airport at CDO which is hampered from extending its runway because of the nearby high land on one end and a low land on the other end. Besides that, the Lumbia airport which is located on a platue, about 10 kilometers away from the heart of CDO is very inconvenient to reach for other users of the airport coming from outside CDO.

What justifies the new international airport in Laguindingan is that it serves not only the rest of the people of Misamis Oriental but also those in Iligan City and the two Lanao provinces without necessary depriving those in Bukidnon and Camiguin.

When I was still working at the National Economic Development Authority (Neda) Regional Office in Cagayan de Oro from 1974 to 1986, I once visited the Laguindingan airport site which was mostly barren.

There and then I already saw its potential to be developed into an airport because of the limitations of the Lumbia airport.

Upon landing at the new airport, however, what amazed me again was the other potential I did not see before: the wide tracts of open land around the airport and the other bigger and wider tracts of land beside the 4 km to 5 km access road to the airport from the highway. With the airport, these lands now have potential for development into a new industrial park to house high tech and other industries of the footloose type that will need the new airport in bringing in and out their intermediate inputs and products just as the industries at the economic zones near the Mactan International Airport are doing.

The Municipality of Laguindingan has a distance of 20 km to 25 km to CDO and some 60 km or more to Iligan City. Traversed with a first class concrete highway, the area provides another avenue for growth because towards these two cities from the airport in Laguindingan are more open land that await development for industrial and other non-traditional agricultural uses.

All these new prospects lead me to see another economic boom to come to CDO and the rest Misamis Oriental, including Iligan City and Lanao del Norte.

I saw the first economic boom of Cagayan de Oro City when I was still working with Neda there. This came after the widening and concreting of the Iligan-Cagayan de Oro-Butuan Road, the asphalting of the Sayre Highway to Bukidnon and the construction of the new Macajalar Bay Port which was complemented by the Regional Cities Development Project that widened and improved CDO’s road network and improved its vital city services and other facilities, together with the improvement of its water supply system and the establishment of the 3,000-hectare Phividec Industrial Estate in nearby municipalities of Tagoloan and Villanueva. Before that, Misamis Oriental was the first province to be covered under the Rural Electrification Program which was fathered by former senator and vice president Emmanuel Pelaez. It was also this man who worked with Ferdinand Marcos and the veterans group to put up the Phividec Industrial Estate.

With these major government projects being done almost at the same time, it did not take long for the private sector to plan and develop their own projects that now make CDO one of the most modern and progressive cities in the country. Now the city is proud of its many large competing malls aside from the many small, medium and large scale industries that are scattered just outside its center which included the Del Monte Pineapple Processing Plant in Bogo.

Iligan City and CDO some 80 or more kilometers from each other are like twins. Iligan itself is an industrial hub. It started becoming one when the first hydroelectric plant was put up at the lower end of the Agus River where the Maria Cristina falls is located. The building of the first hydro plant required many industries to be set up by the government to make use of the excess power output of the hydro plan when the private sector was not yet ready. The biggest industrial project was the former government owned and operated Iligan Integrated Steel Mill. Found now in Kiwalan a few kilometers from the heart of Iligan are cement plants, coconut oil and flour mills and a host of other related small and medium size industries, including an activated carbon plant in the adjacent municipality in Misamis Oriental.

All these also lead me to think of Cebu and its potential for a second “Ceboom”. Right now we are bidding out the construction of the new terminal building at Mactan Airport which will cost almost P20 billion. And not long from now we may also finally see the decision to develop a new international port in Consolacion a few kilometers from the newly constructed Cansaga Bridge. The new bridge itself is opening a new opportunity for the development of the coastal land in Consolacion and Liloan which was once forgotten when the only exit to the north was the national highway from Mandaue City which lies farther from the coast.

Now the Tayud Provincial Road which bisects this once-forgotten land from Cansaga Bridge to Consolacion and Liloan is being widened and improved. Also in the plan is the construction of the North Coastal Road from Cansaga Bridge all the way to Liloan town along the coast. What could happen next with all these, I leave to the imagination of the private sector that can make their own response that could usher in the next “Ceboom.”