The Department of Science and Technology tapped local logistics provider Air21 for the door-to-door delivery of products of Filipino micro, small and medium scale enterprises which are showcased on the agency’s onestore.ph online and mobile shopping store.
Sancho Mabborang, the Science Department’s regional director for Cagayan Valley and national program manager of the department’s onestore.ph project, said Air21 agreed to provide “socialized rates” to MSMEs for their raw materials and their deliveries to distributors and retailers in Metro Manila and other regions.
“This partnership with Air21 will greatly address the challenges faced by our MSMEs in the countryside of transporting their products and also their raw materials,” Mabborang said.
He said the partnership would help the DOST, in partnership with the Filipino Inventors Society Producers Cooperative, in opening more Onestore Inventrepreneur hubs in all regions across the country.
Mabborang and FISPC president Francisco Pagayon met with top officials of Air21, led by vice president for operations and analytics Gloria Trinidad-Estabaya to formalize the partnership.
Estabaya said the partnership was in line with the company’s move to increase its provincial operations.
Estabaya said Air21 had four six-wheeler trucks going out from its Pampanga hub for distribution to northern and southern Luzon, all filled with cargo outbound, but were mostly empty when they returned inbound to the distribution hubs.
Estabaya said the company aimed to fill up these inbound trucks with cargo, hopefully with the goods of MSMEs in the provinces, under the collaboration with DOST.
The onestore.ph online and mobile shopping platform has so far uploaded 10,353 products of Filipino MSMEs. The onestore.ph was conceptualized to provide an e-commerce platform for products of Filipino MSMEs provided with technical and equipment assistance by the DOST under its Small Enterprise Upgrading Program program.