The Committee on Investment, Trade, Industry, and Economic Enterprise of the Sangguniang Panlungsod hailed as welcome development the operations of two more hotels in the city expected to begin in June, this year.

The two accommodation facilities are: the El Sancho Hotel along J. Miranda Avenue near the City Hall compound, and The Litton Hotel along Magsaysay Avenue.  Both are home-grown enterprises in the field of hotel and accommodation.

City Councilor Jose Perez, chairman of the committee, said it could be a good thing if the planned opening will push through before the end of the second quarter in time for the celebration of the Peñafrancia fiesta, especially when big gatherings for civic and religious activities will be permitted due to cases of Covid-19 which continue to decline.

Every September of the year, except for year 2020 and 2021 when Covid-19 pandemic was on its height, the traditional religious event is considered to be the biggest Marian event in Asia where it draws almost a million tourists, pilgrims, and devotees from different parts of the country and abroad.

Perez said that aside from providing accommodation to big gatherings, Naga is actually a trading center where businessmen converge.  “And most of these traders operate their businesses not only in Naga but in other parts of the Bicol Region as well, that is why the presence of accommodation facilities in our city are essential and highly in demand,” he said.

He said Naga’s strategic location makes it to become the region’s melting pot or a place where a variety of cultures or individuals assimilate into a cohesive whole often results in invigoration or novelty.

At present, the city has 91 accommodation facilities compose of hotels, lodging houses, tourist inns, apartelles, residences, and town houses.  Around 45 of these business establishments are accredited with the Department of Tourism.  The most recent to operate in the list is Summit Hotel Naga owned by the Robinsons Holdings.

Aside from El Sancho Hotel and The Litton Hotel, 2 more accommodation houses owned by local players are expected to rise soon in the city: the UMA Residences along Magsaysay Avenue and the 8-storey condominium along Blumentritt and Misericordia streets in Barangay Tinago.  Both facilities are undergoing constructions.

The Committee on Investment, Trade, Industry and Economic Enterprises of the Sangguniang Panlungsod here is set to formally endorse to the Office of the City Mayor its proposal to create a technical working group that will conduct a feasibility study on the planned construction of a new public market.

This was bared to this paper by City Councilor Jose Perez, chairman of the SP committee, who said that the project will bring more economic advantages to the city aside from decongesting traffic and commuters in the already overcrowded Central Business Districts I and II.

In an interview with Mayor Nelson Legacion, he said the plan, once materialized, is perceived to fire up enormous economic activity in the city.  “What we need to consider well is the exact location of this big-ticket project that promises about development of another new growth area in our place,” he said.

Legacion also made mention of his administration’s plan to put up a 2-level or 3-level satellite market on a 3,000 square meter lot in Barangay Sta. Cruz.  The project is a component of the Sta. Cruz New Development Area which is seen to open up new business and job opportunities in the area. The site sits on the outskirt of the city’s old business district that is host to at least two universities, urban housing projects, a mall, and a ballooning population that call for more mobility and access to various products and services. Already, a City Health Office II and a national high school have risen in the area.

Although no specific site yet, the new public market project will rise somewhere in the northeastern part of the city where the upper barangays of Carolina, San Isidro, Pacol, and Cararayan are situated.

“Once realized, the new public market will also cater to the needs of the residents of nearby barangays of Del Rosario, Concepcion Grande and even those in Barangay San Felipe where new access roads will be constructed, including building a new road that will serve as a diversion route by-passing the Concepcion-Del Rosario section of the national highway,” the councilor said.

Perez said the existing Naga City People’s Mall (NCPM), popularly called as Naga City supermarket then, was constructed in 1964 and has been in operation since 1969, when the city’s population was only around 70,000. 

The city councilor said that it is good enough that a new public market be constructed to be able to provide the city, now with more than 209,000 people residing (based on 2020 census), and still increasing in the next few years,” he added.

“Talipapa in the barangays cannot help the consumers to get lower prices because their merchandise at these satellite markets are procured from the NCPM and thus travel cost and profit margin are immediately added to the products retailed at the satellite markets,” Perez said.

The councilor, who is also the chairman of the Committee on Consumer Protection in the Sangguniang Panlungsod, said like the NCPM, the new public market will become a bagsakan, a service landing area for goods and products at wholesale prices which redound to low prices when sold at retail in the market’s various stalls and stores.

“A new public market will certainly means a new growth corridor, a new center for business, trade, and other socio-economic activities,” Perez added.

The councilor stressed that with the city’s current population of over 209,000 which makes Naga a highly-urbanized city, it is only right that we should be prepared for its burgeoning economic growth and progress which should begin with another new mass-based public market.