Guerrilla type of export strategy
Iam reprinting an article that I wrote in this column sometime in year 2000 when I was still the Undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The article was very timely at that time. It is still very timely and relevant at this time. The title of my article then was “Small is Beautiful.”
“For the past many years, different export strategies have cropped up to boost our exports and generate more foreign exchange proceeds for our country. Today, the search is still going on for the “right” export strategy.
What seems to be the reason other Asian countries have gotten ahead of us in terms of export performance? Thailand, for example has such an outstanding export performance notwithstanding the occurrence of coups in that country one after the other for the past years. Thailand’s export performance alone in buko, tuna, pineapple, and rice visa-vis our own export performance in said products is a miracle - that is, if you believe in miracles. And if we consider too Thailand’s achievement in costume and fine jewelry, then we have to work double time to find the right export strategy.
We are running out of time, so to speak. We have to come up with a practicable, realizable, and speedy export strategy that can maximize our limited resources, our limited manpower, and our limited time.
Too many export strategies advocated by our export gurus have come and gone. In the midst of the mushrooming of export strategies, one strategy which has been neglected, ignored, forgotten, and not considered - is the identification of products that can generate a few
million dollars a year. Products that do not belong to the category of “export winners” but have the capability of generating consistently from US$1- 5 million a year with a huge potential of growth annually if nurtured with the proper government incentives. If we can identify at least fifty (50) such products initially - then it is a good start. Considering that the export proceeds of one such product is insignificant.But if we quantify the few millions of dollars generated by, say fifty (50) Philippine products, then the export proceeds figure becomes significant.
The trouble with many of us is that our attention is focused on “big” things - products with big export potentials . We tend to look for products with big prospects at the start. We get stucked here. We are obsessed with this thought of having products with instant big export potentials, that we fail to appreciate the small products with vast potentials just lying around us unnoticed.
Small is beautiful. Sad to say, many of those in the export business have forgotten this. Everybody seems in a hurry to join the bandwagon looking for that export product with instant big potentials. Everybody seems to be affected with the syndrome to think big, act big, and export big.
In my more than 30 years of exposure in the export business - in the then Export Department of the Central Bank ; as a lecturer/speaker in export seminars and workshops, entrepreneurship and livelihood ; and as a practicing exporter – I have come to realize that it is high time we concentrate on a guerrilla type of export strategy – We are now running out of time; running out of export promotional funds; and running out of skilled manpower.
The ironic part of it is that the stress and distress experienced by exporters are not fully appreciated by many of us. One exporter articulated it this way: ‘one has to be in the export business to appreciate the magnitude of the problems that we are encountering’.”
Hopefully, the policy-makers of our export industry will take time to read and reread this article and relate this to our present dismal export performance.