s far as the Department of Trade and Industry is concerned, a three-point government intervention is needed to help ensure the success of this administration’s economic programs. These focus points include encouraging and taking care of new and existing investments in the country, building infrastructure which which will fare favorably against our neighbors, and, last but not least, empowering the country’s small and medium enterprises.
This three-pronged approach can help make into reality the legacy programs of the President such as creating six to ten million jobs over her term, providing assistance to over three million entrepreneurs, and opening up two million new hectares to agribusiness.

Zeroing In On the SMEs
The power of entrepreneurship is going to be the solution to the country’s jobs and economic problem. To reach the almost impossible target of ten million jobs over six years, all the government has to do is boost by at least two persons annually the employment capabilities of more than 800,000 registered SMEs in the country.
To return the favor, government will assist the SMEs – or businesses with capital of not more than P100 million – especially in the areas of investment and working capital, market access, and product technology.
By broader strokes, government will help create a more conducive business environment for SMEs - an environment which encourages entrepreneurship.
What Tony Tan-Caktiong has done with Jollibee has to be replicated in huge numbers. In a little over 25 years, it now has over 26,000 employees. There are still a lot of those who started with nothing but were able to build something huge.

An example of the power of entrepreneurship is also demonstrated by the Association of Filipino Franchisers, a group of 37 franchises spawned and owned by Filipino entrepreneurs. On the average, its members started their businesses 11 years ago. This year, their consolidated sales will already be P5.4 billion. Their total number of employees: 10,300 people. Imagine if those 37 people did not go to business but instead worked for someone else. They would not create that value for the economy.
But the culture of entrepreneurship that the country needs is one more friendly to failure, one more accepting of risks. The environment must also be able to help those who have failed so that people will be bolder to take risks inherent to business. Successful entrepreneurs will tell you that they’ll be lucky to have one successful venture in every ten. But that one actually pays for the nine other failures.
The other thing government needs to focus on is guiding Filipinos on what kind of businesses to go into. Filipinos like to go into rental type of businesses. When an OFW comes home with money, he buys a tricycle or a jeepney or a house for rent. In fact, it is common to see on jeepneys “Katas ng Saudi” signage.
Filipinos also like to become middlemen in the supply chain. But this only increases the distance between the manufacturer and the consumer, making our economy more inefficient, increasing the cost of goods, and burdening consumers in the process. Worse, both the rent-seeking and the middleman businesses do not create for the economy a significant amount of multiplier effect.
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