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The Economic Side

The main economy is based on rice and corn milling, food processing, baking, rattan and wood furniture production. Additional businesses in concrete products, wax and candle factories, clothing, and other local industries are improving the new province's economic outlook.

Agriculture products include rice, vegetables, corn, root crops, coconuts, fruit trees, coffee, cacao, tobacco and rubber. Livestock and poultry productions are locally sustained and require additional investments.

Tungawan Mariculture Zone, Sibugay
Launched – March 03, 2007
Area – 500 Hectares

Mariculture farming in The Philippines

The local government is pushing for the extension of the fish port in Taytay Manobo in the municipality of Naga in order to expand its mariculture and fishing industries. The local economy is conducive to extensive mariculture, which is the farming of aquatic plants and animals in salt water. Thus, mariculture represents a subset of the larger field of aquaculture, which involves the farming of both fresh-water and marine organisms. The major categories of mariculture species are seaweeds, mollusks, crustaceans, and finfish.

As of early 2009,
The Philippines has 40 Mariculture Parks in operation and out of the 11 in Mindanao, one is located in Tungawan, Province of Zamboanga Sibugay. Mariculture parks operate much like industrial estates on land, with investors setting up or renting fish cages to grow high-value marine species such as bangus, lapu-lapu, siganids, seaweeds and other high-value aquatic organisms. Mariculture parks are not only practical and economical but are also ecologically friendly. There is no need to cut a single mangrove tree in raising bangus, in a sea cage, and is also more economical because it would cost only about P150,000 to put up a sea cage while development cost for a hectare of fishpond would reach about P1 million, according to a recent Philippine Senate hearing.

Additional Senate data encourages that mariculture yields can reach as much as five tons in a 10x10x 5 meter-sea cage inside a mariculture park, which is the same as in a one-hectare fish pond. With production cost of P70.00-P75.00 per kilo, a fish farmer could easily earn some P90,000.00 per cropping per cage or a total of P 180,000.00 for two cropping periods per year. Additionally, to further increase earnings, a fish farmer can also grow danggit or samaral in sea cages in tandem with bangus under a system called aqua-polyculture. After one cropping with 1,680 pieces fingerlings, the danggit catch could reach an estimated 100 kilos, which could easily fetch an additional cash of P8,800.00.

credits to zamboanga.com website