Inside Asian Gaming

IAG DEC 2019年12月 亞博匯 22 COVER STORY I t’s 11am on a Monday morning and the roads outside Clark International Airport, located right in the heart of Clark Freeport Zone, Central Luzon, are flowing freely. Complemented by tree-lined streets and pockets of open space, it’s notable not so much for the lightness of traffic as the stark contrast to the Philippines’ more prominent economic hub of Manila, located two hours to the south by car. But none of this is by accident. “We have a very nice environment here – our water is still clean, our air is still fresh and we’d like to keep it that way,” explains Oliver Butalid, a consultant of Pampanga Province for Investments and Tourism and a key driver of the region’s “Megalopolis” master plan, released in February 2018. “We want to avoid going in the same direction as Metro Manila.” The Pampanga Megalopolis plan is a comprehensive strategic plan aimed at harnessing the rapid growth currently being enjoyed by the province while making sure to “spread the wealth”, ultimately avoiding a so- called “do-nothing scenario” of over-congestion in some of Pampanga’s 22 identified towns and under- development in others. Under the slogan “Pampanga: Counter-Magnet of Metro Manila”, the plan’s implementation revolves around five key investment priorities – anchor tourism destinations, light industrial parks, high-value manufacturing, high-value agriculture and smart city technologies –with the location of each to be determined by the unique competitive advantages each town has to offer. “The idea is that no town will be left behind,” Butalid says. Central Luzon, the administrative region overseeing seven different provinces in the Philippines’ central