Realtor’s success proves gov’t support key to OFW business dev’t
by MARLENE H. ELMENZO

TAGUIG CITY–BUILDING and selling high-end houses in a war-torn land like Jolo might appear surreal for some investors, especially overseas Filipino workers.

For former OFW Michael Abubakar who claims a successful realty business in his hometown, links with government is key.

Abubakar was recently awarded by a government-backed group for investing in this third class municipality and capital of Sulu.

Populated by traditionally peaceful tribes of Islamic believers, Jolo, Sulu, is also clutched in a shooting war between Philippine government armed forces and armed members of branded-terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.

Abubakar and his residential subdivision-building business were recognized last December by the group of Jose Concepcion, government consultant for entrepreneurship, as one of the OFW entrepreneurs dubbed as “most inspiring.”

“Jolo was an impoverished land and you build a housing like this and parang siyang babae na na make-up-an mo. Bago pa makuha ng iba, ikaw pa ang unang na-fall in love,” Abubakar said. (“Jolo is like a woman you’ve applied make up on and before others take her, you would be the first to fall in love.”)

Abubakar used the past tense to refer to his hometown which he left in 1973 after fighting raged between government forces and Muslims rejecting the leadership of Manila-based elected officials.

Twenty-three years later, he returned home in one piece and rich, having sold a quarter-of-a-million peso house in plush Ayala-Alabang subdivision in Manila for thirty-seven times its value.

Likewise, Abubakar said he was receiving US$6,600 a month as salary from an American firm when he decided to go home in 1996.

With that money, he established the M. Abubakar Consolidated Engineering (Mace) in Manila and flew back to Jolo the year an Asian financial crisis popped the real estate sector of countries including the Philippines.

Like a clueless gardener sent to make a landscape out of a vast, arid lot, I was confronted with a serious predicament–where and how to start, Abubakar said.

The government began it for him through a joint-venture housing project for Muslims.

With one foot in the public sector and another in business, Abubakar tapped a five-year loan from the government housing agency and built the First Sulu Estate Subdivision in Patikul, one of Sulu’s 18 municipalities.

It was the first high-class subdivision established in the province, Abubakar claims.

“When you come to think about it, in Jolo you cannot find good clients,” he said. “No one told me that [the project) would be successful. Other people told me, ‘Oy, you’re just throwing good money after bad.’”

Even my wife thought I was going crazy, Abubakar said.

Solid lean-to’s
“NOBODY can afford this housing [if they’re just] ordinary person[s]. But they [government agencies] were right behind me, supporting me all throughout,” Abubakar said.

The market also bit.

Married couples who are both working and families of OFWs composed more than half of the four hundred houses he was able to sell.

Our fear that there won’t be buyers was a myth: there was a hidden market, Abubakar said.

“Housing [projects], wherever you put it, will really be for development. The people of Jolo who were not really used to having good houses, [found a concrete goal and ambition],” Abubakar said.

He claims that after the project, an exodus of Sulueños began from the coastal areas to the inland portions of the island.

“[They saw] how to live properly in a community.”

Abubakar added that the project brought a sense of ownership to the owners who, wanting to protect their properties, advocated against war.

“No matter how small they [people of Jolo] are, they like to be involved now. Because …you don’t like other people to destroy [your house].”

He claims his business also generated jobs for nearly a hundred families of carpenters and masons.

This he did by solidifying links with government.

He said he involved his company in other government infrastructure projects such as building the Sulu island circumference road and expanding the Sulu port. He provided American soldiers and civilian volunteers local laborers in building deep wells.

Two years ago, he established a low-cost housing for policemen in a 24-hectare of land in Patikul, Sulu.

He said he is planning to build a village for teachers.

Abubakar hopes that like in Saudi Arabia, infrastructure developments in Sulu will result to economic development.

This will eventually eradicate the “slum areas” on the face of his homeland, he said.

Sand lots
ABUBAKAR said his business idea was also inspired by his continuous comparison of the Muslim-dominated societies of Saudi Arabia and his hometown.

“I had never seen a country so poor,” he said. “In Saudi, I saw four families living in one house,” Abubakar told the OFW Journalism Consortium (OFWJC) ® on the sidelines of a forum on entrepreneurship.

The place seemed to be a classic cinematic scope of Mars, Abubakar said of Saudi Arabia that time. He added that in the vast desert, houses are located within a mile of each other.

Except during the Hajj season, the locals in Saudi had no means of livelihood, he claimed, which made him feel Jolo was luckier.

But, he said, he almost wept when he returned to Jolo: it didn’t have deserts but houses where wedged like Siamese twins in areas he described as “slums”.

In some places, one needed to pass the houses of neighbors to get to the road, he explained.

Jolo’s economy he also said “is as lifeless as the island.”

A fisherman could only sell a kilo of fish of for two pesos and a farmer could only sell a kilo of mangosteen for eight pesos, he added.

Still, Jolo remains Abubakar’s market –its 87,998 people in 12,814 households—for his dream of mimicking that oil-rich country’s pace of development. end

This article is free, but to publish, broadcast, rewrite, or redistribute this, please write or email the OFW Journalism Consortium editor@ofwjournalism.net or ofwjournalism@gmail.com for permission.