The Department of Trade and Industry is implementing a joint program with the Department of Tourism to strengthen Philippine tourism value and supply chains and enable more small and medium sized enterprises to benefit from coming regional economic integration.
Through the Leveraging Industries for Supply Chain (LINC) program, SMEs are provided design and mentorship activities that will make their respective businesses more competitive compared to their counterparts in the region.
“We all need to work together to understand the pros and cons of global policy reforms and to ensure that poor communities in the tourism supply chain can participate, either as destinations or suppliers to tourism markets,” noted Trade Assistant Secretary Ceferino Rodolfo.
Rodolfo, in a briefing with stakeholders on the Asean Economic Community last week in Tagbilaran City, noted that in Bohol alone, an average of 435,000 local and foreign tourists arrive yearly, providing livelihood for some 3,000 micro, small and medium sized industries in that province alone.
DTI Regional Director Asteria Caberte added that the trade agency continued to provide interventions to support MSMEs.
These include assistance in branding and promotions, design, mentorship, production; quality enhancement programs; financial loans and capital equipment and shared services facilities, such as the Bohol Fabrication Laboratory or “Fablab.”
“The Bohol Fablab is a shared service facility for small enterprises to produce quality souvenir products that can be supplied to tourism facilities. These interventions intend to create value chain and links between the trained participants and the producers, exporters and other entrepreneurs in Bohol,” Caberte explained.
Such interventions, support, and facilities for MSMEs were deemed critical in ensuring that they will remain competitive amid the scheduled establishment of the Asean Economic Community by end 2015.
The AEC is expected to transform the 10 member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including the Philippines, into a single market and production base, characterized by the free flow of goods, services, skilled labor, investments and capital.
Asean, with its combined population of over 600 million, is one of the fastest growing economic regions in the world.
It has a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of about $2.3 trillion (as of 2012).
The region’s estimated trade with the world is $2.5 trillion.
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