Philippine Business Magazine: Volume 8 No. 6 - Editorial
Pulling Together
By Nonette Climaco

When I first heard President Arroyo announce the holding of a National Socio-Economic Summit (NSES), I was attending another “summit” then — the Housing Summit on 24 October in Malacanang. My initial reaction to the announcement was “Here comes another one-of-those conferences.” But as I became more familiar with its rationale and the process leading to the holding of the summit day itself on 10 December 2001, I somehow began to appreciate the urgency to undertake such an exercise.

For one, the Summit represents the government’s realization that, indeed, the local economy is feeling the pinch of global developments (on top of domestic problems) and pressing problems require urgent solutions. The Administration believes that the prevailing risk and uncertainty is unprecedented in the economic history of the Philippines. A sense of urgency should pervade the thinking of all public and private sector officials to emphasize the importance of working closely with one another. In doing so, little time is lost in bottlenecks that are the result of miscoordination and disagreements on how to do things. With the President as the Summit Convenor and the Senate President and House Speaker as Co-Convenors, unity in these two branches of government is already displayed.

The Summit’s objectives were clearly defined: to come up with doable and timely action agenda for the period 2001-2003 to mitigate the impact of the economic slowdown on the poor and on vulnerable economic sectors such as tourism and the airline industry. It also identifies the sectors responsible for implementing the action agenda – the government for administrative measures; the legislature for the legislative agenda; business; labor; and civil society.

But as we say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, all the work that went into the Summit will have gone to waste if there is no proper implementation. Therefore, to ensure the fulfillment of the action agenda, a management information system is being worked out by the Presidential Management Staff – the NSES secretariat. And work they did, calling a meeting on 21 December, a time when most were winding down work for the year. In that meeting which I attended, various private sector groups were identified to take the lead in making sure that commitments made during the Summit materialize. Anyway, the commitments came from the stakeholders themselves who stand to gain with improvements in the economic system.