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Unilever Philippines is threatening to pull out of the country, should the City of Manila insist on its order for the company to move out of its headquarters in Paco, Manila. The order to relocate was issued following the reclassification of the area into residential from commercial in 2006.

The company is involved in the production of food, home-care and personal products, who boasts of P24 billion in annual sales. Unilever is one of the top 10 taxpayers of the City of Manila, it was in fact honored by the city on June 23 last year, together with nine other taxpayers for their contribution to its coffers.

In 2006, Paco, and with it Pandacan, was reclassified into a residential area by City Ordinance 8119, the same ordinance which, together with another ordinance – 8027, is forcing the oil firm to relocate their depots. Unilever has been occupying 10 hectares in Paco for 82 years now.

But the multinational firm said that it would rather pull out of the country rather than move elsewhere here, adding that it would rather be somewhere where the policies are more business-friendly. Chito Macapagal, the company’s vice president for corporate affairs said “with the current crisis, why would we move out of Manila and transfer to, say, Batangas? It would make more sense for us to move to another country where we are sure policies are more consistent business-friendly.”

Macapagal said that it would cost Unilever up to a billion pesos to move elsewhere in the country. But if the city would strictly enforce its order, he said they could always go to China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, where the Unilever Group had existing operations.

Because of the company’s threat to pull out of the country, city councilors rushed to approve Ordinance 7117. The new ordinance would reclassify select areas in Paco and Pandacan into medium and heavy industrial sites to allow it, and the others to stay.

The company have about 3,000 direct and indirect workers who would be displaced should they make true of their threat to pull out. Affected too are their local suppliers and transporters of inbound cargo who stand to lose P1 billion and P30 million respectively, each year.