Subic Freeport to expand to Hermosa town

SUBIC BAY Freeport, Philippines—The boundaries of the Subic Freeport Zone will soon be expanded to include towns in Bataan and Zambales, according to officials of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.

To facilitate the expansion, the SBMA board of directors initiated Project Unity, a series of one-on-one meetings with the provincial boards of Zambales and Bataan, the municipal councils of Subic, Hermosa, and Morong, and the city council of Olongapo.

“This kind of shared development will redound to the mutual benefit of the SBMA and the town of Hermosa. It will not only address the SBMA’s need for more areas [that could be developed for the zone] but also open up employment opportunities for the people,” said SBMA director Bienvenido Benitez, who chairs Project Unity.

The project aims to create synergy in development and commercial projects that will impact directly on local economies, the SBMA said in a statement.

The SBMA said the project would also “pool scarce resources toward better and more efficient project development and implementation.”

SBMA director Philip Camara, Project Unity vice chairman, said the board had invited local officials to a workshop in November to plan the expansion.

In a recent meeting at the town hall with a group of SBMA directors, Hermosa Mayor Danilo Malana said the municipal council issued a January resolution “adopting Executive Order 675, which authorizes certain contiguous areas in Hermosa to be declared as additional secured areas under the Subic Bay Special Economic and Freeport Zone.”

SBMA directors Benitez, Camara, John Philip Chua Chiaco and Ramon Diez Sesdoryo welcomed the news as “a positive development toward the envisioned expansion of the freeport and the creation of more jobs in these expansion areas.”

Hermosa officials expressed keen interest in developing for the freeport some 200 hectares of flat land in Sitio (settlement) Mabiga in Barangay (village) Tipo.

Located at the western part of Hermosa, Mabiga is about 10 minutes’ drive from Subic Freeport and about 25 minutes away from Clark.

“We will need an exit from SCTEx (Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway) to Hermosa,” Malana said, adding that a link to the highway would ease the movement of goods to Olongapo City.

Former SBMA Administrator Armand Arreza described Hermosa as “an ideal expansion site for Subic Freeport” when he met with Malana in December 2010 to brief him about EO 675.

The order, which was issued in Nov. 2007, extends the secured area of the Subic Bay Special Economic and Freeport Zone to lands still within the zone’s perimeter but outside the fenced-in facility of the former United States naval base.