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Pagadian City – We need to re-engineer our operations in Agora Public Market in order to make it more profitable to sustain our development projects in our city,” Mayor Samuel Co told this reporter.
“As of now, we are trying to straighten our operations in Agora under our City’s Economic Enterprise. Agora is one that needs for re-engineering its system of operations. As far as Agora is concerned, the city has only a net income of P4.2-million for year 2007 because of operational expenses and the management of electric bills of which the city encountered headaches due to delinquent collections, Mayor Co said. “We are going to beautify the building and stalls inside Agora; we’ll introduce some renovations and uniformity of all stalls and impose strictly cleanliness in the entire Agora complex. We have also to improve our facilities inside Agora like garbage collection, parking area for private vehicles of course with parking fees and security” Co added. It was learned that the present system of Agora complex are first, the stalls are rented for only a meager amount by the occupants and the electric bill will be collected individually by the city government based in their consumption as reflected in the electric meter stall by stall. But the problem is some stall occupants are not able to pay their electric bills promptly forcing the city to subsidize their billing because ZAMSURECO I collects from the city government the whole amount consumed at Agora.
Under the new system, the city government will let the stall occupant to directly apply to ZAMSURECO I for their electric connection and to the PCWD for their water connection so that the city has no burden of collecting their bills. Second, there will be re-sectioning of stalls. At present you will notice that you can buy groceries, spices and rice and etc. in one stall. Under the new system, if you are selling rice, you will be at the rice section and you are not allowed to sell any other item. Third, at present stall occupants are making some renovations to their stalls. Under the new system, there should be a uniformity of stalls and occupants are not allowed to make any renovations.
Fourth, the rental of stalls are still based on the 1980's. As an example is the fresh fish section, the rent they are paying is only P120 a month times 300 stalls equals 36-thousand times one year equals P432-thousand and it’s now more than 18-years since. In other words, the city has a gross income of more than P7.7-million in 18-years. That’s bad because this time we need to renovate the wet market building and we need seven to ten million pesos. Where will we get the money for the renovation if that is the only income we’ve got? So we need to increase the rentals inside the Agora after introducing some changes,” Mayor Co explained.It was learned that the Agora's actual gross income for 2007 was more than P13.1-million less P9.7-million operating expenses equals more than P4.2-million, this was reduced compared to 2006 with the actual gross income of P15-million. The reason is because of the demolition of the night market on June 2007 in preparation for the construction of a 5-storey Shopping Mall, Lucille Juros head of the city economic enterprise said. For this year 2008, we can introduce some development in our city especially at Agora. Because, in the 94 stalls alone that is facing outside Agora the city is estimated to generate an income of P6.7-million in one year at P6-thousand rental per stall, Mayor Co discosed. Last update : 26-04-2008 14:17
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