Getting a Return
requires. This would mean paying decent salaries and giving decent and secure jobs. They would be overwhelmed with applicants many of which would come from the local supermarket chains. Everybody would have to raise their employment terms and conditions. Not too good for the local operators.
Business in the Philippines is for Filipinos and those with power and influence don’t really like competition, they don’t really like to share, and they like to do their business in the usual Filipino way. About time for a “wake-up call” I think. On corruption, which is a large part of doing business in the Filipino way, whatever is done little will change if the Philippines business environment continues to keep itself exclusive. Other business models are needed and they will only come by allowing foreign involvement and management of foreign invested businesses; continue to keep them out and not only will the economy not develop as it needs to so as to overcome the current shortages of opportunity and the fast growing population, but the traditional Filipino business methods will also be sustained.
There is nothing wrong with some economic protectionism, government has to do this to ensure fair opportunity for its citizens, but in today’s globalized world (how I hate that term!) there is no place for excluding foreign investment and foreign competition. It is necessary and it’s healthy, and it is the best chance of reducing corruption and making the Philippines more efficient. To fight against this, to make the place unattractive for foreign investors is to give in to the greed of the entrenched business community and there is absolutely no future for the nearly 100 million Filipinos in that.
Outsiders will see the latest move- ments in the expansion of the negative list, the new rulings on foreign ownership and ever increasing restrictions on foreigners and their involvement in business, and the trumpeting about the domestically generated strength of the national fiscal position as politically motivated restrictions to serve local interests protectionist needs, and as fostering a creeping national xenophobia. They will conclude that the Philippines has no real interest in changing its ways, they will look for their returns elsewhere, and life will go on as long as it can as it has done for the last 30 years.
Time to allow some new blood to enter, for surely opening up will help to move the Philippines forward to where it once was and along the road towards advanced economy status. Mike can be contacted mawootton@gmail.com
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