Significant gains seen in plan to promote 7 ‘winner’ sectors

The Aquino administration may have most likely posted significant gains in implementing the necessary reforms and recommendations proposed under the Arangkada Philippines report, the latest assessment for which will be out this week.

An advocacy paper prepared by the Joint Foreign Chambers, the original “Arangkada Philippines: A Business Perspective” report published in December 2010 contained 471 policy recommendations that were meant to accelerate the growth of seven big industry winner sectors and achieve certain targets in terms of revenues, foreign investments and job generation.

“When we assess the seven sectors, I’m expecting most of them will show some improvements and that there are certain sectors that are stronger than the others or made more progress,” noted Ebb Hinchliffe, executive director at the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.

“The focus is whether these seven sectors are accelerating or not. For sure, tourism stepped up, while the mining industry has probably taken a back step to the wrong direction given the current administration’s attitude toward the mining industry,” Hinchliffe said. “Although we have yet to see the results [of the latest report], you’ll see a positive swing in most sections.”

The latest assessment report, as scored by local and foreign businessmen, will be issued this Wednesday at the third anniversary forum of Arangkada Philippines, entitled “More Reforms = More Jobs.”

The report will cite the improvements made in the development of the so-called “big winner sectors”, namely agribusiness; information technology/business process outsourcing; creative industries; infrastructure; manufacturing and logistics; mining, and tourism, medical travel and retirement. The target is to create of $75 billion in new foreign investment, 10 million jobs and over P1 trillion in revenue for the Philippine economy within this decade.

According to Hinchliffe, the Philippine government was moving accordingly toward the achievements of these targets and even “ahead of track” in most areas like the manufacturing sector.

“AmCham is not happy about the mining sector given its tremendous opportunity, but we’re losing jobs. But in the manufacturing sector, yes, we see absolutely positive signs about creating jobs. As you’ve seen in the JFC policy brief, we target to create some 4 million jobs in the manufacturing sector in the next 10 years and we’re ahead of schedule,” Hinchliffe said.

The biggest concerns, according to Hinchliffe, remained to be the mining sector and issues regarding the cost and supply of electricity.

“We’re concerned with the cost of power. We’re also very concerned that Manila Electric Co. has been saying that we may have blackouts this summer. It’s not the right message that foreign investors want to see,” Hinchliffe added.