Apeco questions budget cut

The highest ranking official of Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (Apeco) expressed disappointment over a proposed reduction of the budget for Apeco, saying it would dampen the growth of Aurora province.

Lawyer Gerardo Erquiza, president and chief executive officer of Apeco, issued the statement in the wake of calls for Apeco to be allotted a “caretaker budget” of only P45.8 million next year, which is an 82-percent reduction in the Apeco’s proposed P251-million budget.

Sen. Sergio Osmeña III of the Senate finance committee is pushing for a sparse budget for Apeco in 2015, insisting that giving it the full allocation it had sought would be a “total waste of money.”

“For decades, Aurora province has been neglected and isolated from the rest of the country,” Erquiza said in a statement.

Apeco, he said, was meant to spur economic growth in Aurora and its neighboring provinces.

Edgardo Angara, former Senate president and one of the proponents of Apeco, said the economic zone was “the catalyst for growth” in Aurora, Nueva Ecija and Quirino province, and the city of Santiago in Isabela province.

“All in all, this territory embraces nearly a million population,” Angara said in the statement.

He said reports of members of the Dumagat tribe being displaced from their ancestral land because of Apeco were false.

“They cannot point to a single Dumagat displaced or ejected from his land,” said Angara. “Because there is none,” he added.

Reports of farmers’ land being grabbed for Apeco were also “equally shamelessly false,” he said.