OFW Speak

Davao City, the former largest city in Asia and currently ranks as one of the top 10 tiger cities in Southeast Asia makes a perfect spot to be a technology hub or the next silicon valley of Asia.

Yes, I live in Davao city. Born and raised, I was able to see the best Davao has to offer. Of course I do also have seen the worst, but as far as bias aside, Davao's best outweighs all the odds.

Here are the reasons:

1. Davao is the only city in the Philippines with a dial 911 hotline derived from US's emergency number. This only means, Davao invests much on security of it's people against harm and calamities.

2. Davao is next to Palawan as the cleanest city and with the second cleanest water source in Asia. It may sound irrelevant to outsourcing, but this will ensure that the environment people are working at are clean and stress-free.

3. We have Samal Island protecting us from violent storms 365 days of the year. We rarely have super strong storms that could cause havoc, and guess what, more productivity days for technology-related companies.

4. In Mindanao, we are the only city with tons of power plant backups. So we are basically power-outage or hysteresis proof city in Mindanao.

5. Tax is lower compared to nearby cities in Mindanao. When it comes to taxation, we are competitive enough to say that Davao tops it.

Ok to make things forward, try not to generalize Davao with the entire Mindanao. There are a lot of news out there, mostly violent and bad that pertains to Mindanao. People immediately then tie Mindanao with Davao, which is actually a big fat bummer!

Davao City is a mere city in a huge island of Mindanao. You can not say what's happening in Bratislava happens in United Kingdom just because they happen to belong on the same continent.

But the bottom line is, try checking Davao yourself and see for yourself how many foreign nationals who had earned fortune in the Land of Promise-Davao.