Central Mindanao products up for China trade show

COTABATO CITY --- Two mayors and a governor in Central Mindanao are to send delegates to an international trade engagement in Nanning City in Guangxi, China in September this year.The regional office of the Department of Trade and Industry in Koronadal City on Friday confirmed this via an official communiqué.North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza and Mayors Ronnel Rivera and Joseph Evangelista of the cities of General Santos and Kidapawan, respectively, had separately assured the Center of Trade and Exposition Mission (CITEM) to help showcase their domestic agriculture and tourism potentials during the September 23 to 26 fair in Nanning.Nanning is the capital of the Guangxi Autonomous Region in Southern China.The CITEM is a government corporation attached to the central office of DTI.The three local executives personally assured CITEM’s director, Leah Ocampo, and her staff, project manager Rowena Mendoza, of the readiness of their respective offices to join the three-day event.The activity, dubbed 13th China-ASEAN Expo 2016, will involve member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.Ocampo was accompanied in her separate meetings with Mendoza, Evangelista and Rivera by representatives of the DTI in Region 12, among them Theresa Talan-Chua, a senior staff of the department’s regional office in Koronadal City.The CITEM and DTI aims to attract potential capitalists to put up viable agri-tourism ventures in the South Cotabato-Cotabato-Sultan Kudarat-Sarangani-Gen. Santos (Soccsksargen) area during the three-day trade engagement in Nanning.The Department of Tourism and the Department of Agriculture are both supporting the CITEM-DTI three-day China trade initiative.China, which has more than one billion citizens, is a major export destination of Philippine products.Mendoza and DTI-12 employees are still to convince local executives in Sultan Kudarat province and in Cotabato City to also join the three-day fair abroad.The cities of Kidapawan and Gen. Santos and North Cotabato province boasts of exportable domestic products, among them processed rubber, coffee, sugar from coconut sap, compressed cocoa powder, black and brown rice, palm oil and corn.