DAGUPAN CITY - Officials have not lost hope that business will soon perk up in the two-year old Malimgas Public Market, tagged as the most modern public market ever built yet in Northern Luzon.

Vice Mayor Alvin Fernandez said the city council is about to conduct a committee hearing to gauge the sentiment of the public if he proposed 50 per cent discount for the stallholdes in the second floor of the market will result in 100 per cent occupancy.

The incentive is only good for the months of October till December or because October has arleady started, the offers might start in November till December.

To date, the second floor of the market, which is air-conditioned and serviced by a functional escalator system, is only less than 40 per cent occupied.

The third floor and fourth floors of the market were designed for car parking, yet only a few vehicles are using the same daily, at a big loss to the contractor that obtained the contract to operate the same as pay parking area.

“The problem is on the second floor of the market, not on the first floor which is now fully occupied,” said Fernandez who expressed hope, the initiative will increase a little the revenue collection in that part of the market.

The public market, funded by P315 million loan of the city from the Land Bank of the Philippines, is supposed to be self-liquidating but based on the experience during the past two years, the marekt failed to meet projections as gleaned from its feasibility studies.

However, city hall is not biting on the proposal of the city council.

City Administrator Rafael Baraan said if the council passes a resolution providing for incentives to stallholders of the market’s second floor, it will simply ignore it.

He considers the proposal as ill-conceived and ill-timed and the councilors who initiated this must have been ill-advised because the same is really “out of place” and  “very questionable”.

“It will in fact become a negative thing for the city. It will not help like the way they are thinking,” Baraan said.

Vice Mayor Fernandez said the proposal is only an idea and it will still be Mayor Benjamin Lim who has a final say on the matter. (PNA)