FINNISH investors will soon develop erstwhile barren lands in Bohol into jatropha and timber areas, as well as put up a resort hotel in Panglao island. Gov. Erico Aumentado shepherded Krister Still and Mike Jurvelius, top officials of Barbadenis Oy, a large Finnish timber company, and Petter Makitalo, president of the Finland Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines (FCCP) and of the Philippines-Finland Association for a tete-a-tete with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the Holy Name University (HNU) in Tagbilaran City during her visit here for a forum with students and stakeholders of the tourism industry. After observing a class in tourism and her speech at the university gymnasium before an audience of around 3,000 including students from other universities, colleges and high schools, she proceeded to the Academic Conference Room (ACR) backstage for the closed-door tete-a-tete that Aumentado had arranged. During her speech, however, President Arroyo already hinted of the investors' plans as the governor had briefed her earlier.

Aumentado had met President Arroyo at the Tagbilaran Tourism Port that is part of her Strong Republic Nautical Highway (SRNH), and took the same coaster that brought them directly to HNU. Her party that included Tourism Secretary Joseph Durano and Press Secretary Crispulo Icban Jr. had come in from Cebu. The governor who had dinner with the investors at the Bohol Bee Farm that night said Barbadenis Oy manager Still and Jurvelius who is also forest-fire officer of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Makitalo and Forester June Alvarez, their environment consultant, discussed the area that they intend to develop, the kinds of trees they will plant, the products they can produce from these trees when harvested including biomass for bio-energy, and even sugar from coconut.

Biomass is all plant and animal matter on the earth's surface. Harvesting biomass such as crops, trees or dung and using it to generate energy such as heat, electricity or motion, is bio-energy. Biomass is a very broad term which is used to describe material of recent biological origin that can be used either as a source of energy or for its chemical components. As such, it includes trees, crops, algae and other plants, as well as agricultural and forest residues. It also includes many materials that are considered as wastes by our society including food and drink manufacturing effluents, sludges, manures, industrial (organic) by-products and the organic fraction of household waste. ,Escorted by the governor's chief of staff Antonieto Pernia the following day, the group scouted for areas in Panglao on which to build their resort-hotel complex that would cost around P1 billion.