‘Big logistics firms should help sMEs’ – Finance secretary

DEPARTMENT of Finance (DoF) cited the need for corporate giants in the logistics industry to help micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) take advantage of the through more private-led investments in this sector.

Dominguez said the administration of President Rofrigo Duterte has anchored its strategy of rapid economic expansion on an ambitious “Build Build Build” infrastructure program to pull down the cost of transporting goods, improve linkages across the agriculture and clear the way to inclusive growth.

But the government could not lift the economy by itself, he said, as it needs the full support of the private sector in investing in infrastructure projects such as the logistics facility that Fast Logistics has just built for Unilever Philippines in Cabuyao, Laguna.

“We need thousands of small and medium enterprises that will complete the supply chain of larger industries,” said Dominguez during the inauguration of Unilever’s Cabuyao warehouse.

The state-of-the art warehouse was constructed and fully engineered by Fast Logistics to speed up the sorting and distribution of Unilever products and was designed to accommodate transport vehicles to ensure fast delivery.

According to Dominguez, inefficient infrastructure adds to production costs and diminishes competitiveness and leads to high food prices for urban consumers and worsens poverty.

The infrastructure gap, Dominguez said, has been exacerbated by the country’s archipelagic nature, which has led to the uneven development of island economies, and aggravated by the concentration of economic activities and congestion in large urban centers.

He said decisive government action is needed to address this inherited infra and logistics gap to ensure that the country’s economic growth is consistent with its potential and coherent with the rest of the region.

“This infrastructure program is intended to bring down the costs of transporting goods, improve linkages in the domestic econ agriculture and pave the way towards inclusive development,” Dominguez said.

Moreover, the P8 trillion that will fund the infrastructure modernization program of the Duterte administration will create more jobs, improve land prices, and boost domestic demand he said.