A REACTION PAPER

Presented to
the Faculty of the College of Business Administration
ADAMSON UNIVERSITY
Manila

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Course
CORPORATE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

MHARAYNEL C. AFABLE
M.B.A. 1ST YEAR
 How Competitive the Philippine Economy today? (Business World) Numbers

Don’t Lie

By: Andrew J. Masigan

Background:

This article written by Marasigan is all about how the Philippines is compared to

other ASEAN countries as well as in the whole world. According to the article there two

ways we can benchmark the status of our country with its neighboring countries. The first

one that we can do is to compare the standing of Philippines against neighbors in various

competitiveness indices. Lastly, comparing of historical data or the countries state today

as compared with other neighbors.

In order to better understand we must look the Philippine Regional Position. First

of the indices is the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitive Report. This assess

how efficient an economy is in using the resources available to it, its level of productivity

and its ability to sustain economic growth. It investigates the of a country’s infrastructure,

the strength of its government institutions, the macro economic conditions, the quality of

its primary and higher education, the efficiency of its work force and the sophistication of

its financial markets, among others. Base on this index the Philippines is in the 85 th

position in 2010 to 47th position in 2015 but it slipped to 56th in 2017. With this ranking,

Philippines is only better than Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

The second index is the International Finance Corp.’s Ease in Doing Business

Report. This is a view of how easy it is to do business in a country. This is often looked

by the potential investors. This shows how many hours and steps it takes before the
business to become fully operational. The Philippines rank rose from 148 th position in

2010 to 00th position in 2016, but it slipped in 2017 to 113th position. In this index

Philippines again is only better than Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.

The third index is the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.

This is about how corrupt a nation as perceived by the international community. This also

shows an indication of a country’s good governance. As of 2017, Philippines is in 111 th

position, and 7th in the least corrupt countries in ASEAN region.

Global Innovation Index is an assessment of the innovation performance of 128

countries. In this index, Philippines is 73rd in ranking and the lowest in the ASEAN region.

Reaction:

The economic standing of one’s country can be evaluated in the different criteria

presented in the article, and as per the article Philippines is being behind with other

ASEAN countries, but the efforts of the government is still bearing fruit. Below is the GDP

growth of the country for the past years:

 From the year 2015 where the country experiences the least growth up to this year

third quarter of 2017 is the peak and according to Asian Development Outlook the GDP

will continue to increase because of the growing domestic demand, rising remittances,

higher employment, and increased public spending on infrastructure. Even the credit

rating of the country has been upgraded to BBB from -BBB. With all 1this the Philippines

even with a slow pace of growth is still trying to cope up with the competition in our

neighbors.

Another basis of the competitiveness is on how easy to put up an investment in

the country, and below are the necessary steps on putting up a business in the

Philippines:

1. Finding a temporary space

2. Opening a treasurer-in-trust-for Bank Account

3. Registering the business

4. Securing Local Government Unit Permits

5. Opening a business bank account

6. Employer registration in Government Mandated Sectors

7. Employer preparation on monthly remittance

8. Hiring of employees

9. Order of Operations

With the long list of steps in doing business in the Philippines, it encourages for

other government employee to be involved in red tape, this is why there is an audit of

every government agencies where the line of approving authorities will be lessen, but will

still ensure that proper precautions is still intact.

The last part of the criteria is the corruption present in the country.

Chart 1 Philippine Corruption Index

Chart 2 Philippine Corruption Rank

 Through the years the fight on corruption in the country has been bearing it fruits

now, because as shown in the data above, the ranking of the Philippines in the most

corruption country is already 99th place compared to the other years. This means that the

lesser the corruption the more benefit can be experienced by the Filipinos.

With all the presented data, we may be growing in a slower pace than the

neighboring countries, but we can say that the Government is doing their best for our

country to be in a better position.

 ‘PUTRAGEEZE!’

By: Cielito F. Habito

Background:

This Article is about the experience and observance of the writer on how we

Filipino’s can’s trust one another. One of the experiences is in the Land Transportation

Office where upon renewing of their license they are still required to take the eye check

up while in the other countries they are not requiring the said check-up. Another

experience that had been shared in the article is whenever something was lost in the

Philippines there a notary public involved. Most of all the example is the MPD Honesty

store, which is inspired by the Batanes Honesty Store, but a month after they have closed

the store because according to the custodian, they are losing about Php 1,000 a month.

The store is losing because some of the policeman are not paying and others are getting

change more than what they should have received.

Reaction:

With all the facts stated in the article above, it clearly shows that we Filipino’s do

have trust issue and are not honest enough. This is due to the paradoxical behavior of

Filipinos, in which we are extremely honest but extremely dishonest. Individually Filipinos

are very honest individuals, but if they will be joined in the group it can be a different story,

because of the Filipinos empathy, perception of others emotion, seniority is being valued,

and due to this there are rules that had been set up such as the assigning accountability,

being strict, and firm boundaries should be implemented. The collective trust issue of the

Filipinos because according to Jaime Licauco that “A nation whose policies and rules are
based on the assumptions that everybody is a cheat and liar unless proven otherwise

cannot long endure. Take a close look at our bureaucracy and its rules. It is burdened by

elaborate and often unnecessary checks and balances so that nothing ever gets done in

the process.” With all this mistrust and dishonesty among Filipinos, results to a heavy

check points on each transactions and documentation of every transactions. We must

bring back the time where we can trust our own fellow citizens in everything we do. As

we put more trust on our fellow Filipinos government transactions can also be more made

easy, because they will not require too much documents to support the transactions that

we are doing.