Private sector remains ‘very optimistic’

The business community remains “very optimistic” of the prospects in the final half of President Aquino’s term as it looks forward to hearing the pronouncements in the State-of-the-Nation Address next week.

“I expect to hear a lot about creating jobs and the things that are necessary to create jobs, to improve the quality of workforce and hopefully [the government will be more] attentive to the requirements of businessmen,” noted John Forbes, senior advisor at the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.

“[It is the] private sector [that] has to bring jobs [while] the government sets the proper policy framework and the investors respond via investing,” Forbes told reporters.

According to Forbes, there were a lot of areas where the government could improve on such as infrastructure, the spending for which is expected to surge by 2016. He further noted that if budgeted properly, investments in the country’s infrastructure would “make a difference” and could “make the economy more efficient.”

Such investments would be significant for the economy considering that there was now “more interest” in the Philippines from foreign investors with the government seeing “higher levels of growth, a lot of reforms in the last several years, and good international publicity,” Forbes added.

The business community is also looking forward to hear “ideas” based on the letter sent by the country’s biggest business groups and the Joint Foreign Chambers to President Aquino last month.

In their letter, the business groups asked the Aquino administration to implement critical and strategic measures that would enable the Philippines to continue being one of Asia’s fast-rising economies. These recommendations concerned infrastructure, power and regulatory and policy reforms, which are aimed at generating the “greatest impact in achieving our shared vision of inclusive growth through job generation, poverty reduction and global competitiveness.”

One of the recommendations is the enactment of an effective anti-trust law and competition policy to create a level playing field and, in turn, encourage more productive investments in light of an impending Asean integration in 2015.

The groups also underscored the need to “overhaul the Bureau of Customs and to create an oversight body with private sector representation” as smuggling continued to derail government efforts on revenue collection and job generation.

Strategic transportation infrastructure projects must likewise be accelerated and implemented at the soonest time.

The groups also strongly urged the rationalization of existing incentive-giving laws to further spur investments in crucial and strategic sectors.