Metro Bacolod Chamber organizes forum on Construction and Sorghum Industry

By: Alf Rino
Panay News
August 20, 2008

BACOLOD CITY - The Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. (MBCCI) and the Province of Negros Occidental will hold two forums on Japanese construction technology and human development this coming August 23 and sweet sorghum technology investment on August 29, 2008.

MBCCI partners with the Negros Japan Human Resource Exchange Association Inc. (NJHREAI) in inviting Japanese industry leaders in the construction business. They are Takenori Nakahata, president of the Multi Builders Corp. and Takeshi Nakamura, project executive of Obbayashi Construction. To be held at the Grand Regal Hotel this August 23, 2008. Nakahata and Nakamura will be speaking about the latest Japanese construction technology, Japanese work ethics and expanding the MBCCI-NJHREAI "Train and earn Livelihood Program" by sending more construction trainees to Japan. Nakahata and Nakamura are both members of the MARUCON, a contractors cooperative in Japan which were among the first Japanese construction companies that accepted Filipino trainees.

Meanwhile, Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, energy Secretary Angelo Reyes and Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri will also be here in another forum this August 27 where they will be resource speakers in the First Sweet Sorghum Techno Investment Forum organized by the Province of Negros Occidental, Department of Agriculture, Philippine Agriculture Development and Commercial Corp., Biofuels Philippines and MBCCI.

In a statement issued by MBCCI-Biofuels Philippines to its members, "sweet sorghum already grows in some of the poorest areas in the world". This biofuel feedstock could offer resource-poor nation a shot at energy independence and increased development, without the massive destructive environmental impacts which modernization brought through unhampered expansion of the industrialized world."