By Amado P. Macasaet
Even before the Asean Union could be officially launched in January next year, some small sectors of business are already claiming they are faced with hard times.
One of the earlier complaints was aired by a woman processing durian in Davao. She said her business will be sent to the grave by Thailand which exports fresh durian to the United States and strangely, also to the Philippines.
This alone clearly suggests we have not learned the right technology to produce the delicious, foul-smelling fruit.
A large group of small and medium scale businessmen expressed the same fears. They cannot compete with more developed members of the union, again particularly Thailand.
The loudly proclaimed fears are manifestations of the insular attitude of the Filipino who has always demanded protection from his government. Protection in many forms such as tax holidays, low interest rates, exemption from payment of fees and many more, stifles initiative.
This is the very evil that slows the growth of small businesses in the Philippines.
The complaints against the onslaught of competition with more developed economies in the Asean region are birth pains we must all learn to deal with.
President Fidel V. Ramos “plunged” the country into membership with the World Trade Organization. The accession to the world trade body hauled down, in some cases knocked down, tariff walls. Smaller businesses felt threatened by the removal of protection.
But in time they learned the necessity of doing many things to be able to survive.
They had to adopt modern management techniques, hire professionals, buy more modern machinery and equipment, instill discipline in the minds of workers, etc. It did not take too for such companies like CDO, owned and run by the family of Corazon Dairo Ong to survive and make bigger profits.
A poor country that pretends to be always in a hurry is largely responsible for the introduction and steady growth of fast food chains. The smaller restaurants were killed.
Franchising has become big business. The franchisee learns the successful practices of the franchisor.
The Asean Union is another matter. Competition is regional, not internal to one country. If business is survival of the fittest in market economies, many will fall by the wayside as the Asean Union comes into full force.
But it is the same full force that will ensure the longer term survival of those who are fit to survive. In other words, the birth pains of the Asean Union are a cleansing process. The union will separate the chaff from the grain.
For political and other reasons the Philippine government is largely responsible for stifling open competition and development of heavy reliance on protection. The Parity Agreement which came into force in 1947, gave Americans equal rights as Filipinos except suffrage.
The agreement may be one of the major reasons investors other than Americans did not look too kindly to risking capital in the Philippines. The Laurel-Langley Agreement which gave Philippine sugar preferential price in the US market came next.
The unappreciated effect was complacency. The sugarcane planters refused to modernize their farms. There was no need to do so. There was the United States buying Philippine sugar at almost 50 percent higher than the world market.
The sugar barons amassed huge wealth from special price treatment of their sugar. After the L-L expired in 1976, the sugar industry found itself walking on one leg.
There was no more protection to give them undeserved profits. Undeserved because the profits did not come from hard work and efficient management but from a treaty that was the Laurel-Langley Agreement. Up to this day, the sugar industry in the Philippines is probably one of the most antiquated in the world. So antiquated there were a few times in the past when small volumes of sugar had to be imported.
Yet, we continue to have small sugar quotas in the US with preferential prices.
The economy found itself painfully adjusting to the termination of what we thought were God-sent benefits of bilateral agreements with the United States. In the first place, we sought the Parity Amendment to the Constitution in gratitude to Mother America we thought saved us from the bayonets of the Japanese Imperial Army when it tried to foster the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere by the power of the sword and its “tora tora” war planes.
Instead of demanding rehabilitation of the country ravaged by the Japanese Imperial Army who killed millions of Filipinos shoulder to shoulder with the American GIs, we asked for independence. We worked hard for it during the Commonwealth period when the country was under the United States. We never got the independence.
The Americans at that time were sensibly instilling in our minds the true meaning of democracy, American style. After the Allied Forces won the Second World War against the Japanese, the United States gave us independence on a silver platter but conveniently forgot the duty to put this country back on its feet.
Uncle Sam had a Marshall Plan for Europe where Hitler killed and tortured millions, particularly Jews.
The Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima to bring Japan to its knees. After the terms of Japanese surrender to the Americans were signed on the USS Missouri, Uncle Sam started rehabilitating the country of the enemy that was Japan.
We got independence as “reward” for being on the side of the United States during that war.
The economy was never really able to adjust to the pains of the termination of bilateral agreements with the United States.
We thought we benefited from it. No. The pacts with Uncle Sam pampered us into complacency and laziness that made the country the basket case of Asia.
The ever-griping, ever-complaining small Filipino claims the Asean Union will bring them down to their knees. Yes, there are birth pains.
We should adjust to the workings of a market economy that will be strengthened by the union. The fittest will survive. The birth pains are temporary.
* * * *
email: amadomacasaet@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment