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Philippine Business Magazine: Volume 8
No. 6 - News & Updates
Agriculture as Employer
A Million Jobs
How do you create a million jobs in agriculture?
That was the job handed to Lapanday CEO (and MBC Trustee) Luis Lorenzo
Jr. concurrently Presidential Adviser for Job Creation in Agriculture.
Lorenzo and his team started by identifying markets and enterprise
“movers,” locating suitable production areas, determining
competitive attributes, estimating jobs created, identifying implementation
bottlenecks, and determining government assistance needed.
| Good For Export |
| Items with good export
performance and potentials |
Coconut oil (crude/refined)
Bananas
Tuna, skipjack, yellowfin
Desiccated coconut
Fresh mangoes
Seaweeds and other algae
Carrageenan
Abaca pulp
Chemicals |
They also analyzed the supply chain for “seed
to shelf” and determined supply gaps in the local market for
major import commodities such as rice, meat maize, coffee, feed
(corn, cassava), and food products. Meantime, so-called enterprise
movers who could act as either producers or buyers were identified
as the private sector and local government units (LGUs).
The group also pointed out implementation bottlenecks and obstacles:
rice and sugar smuggling, technical smuggling of palm oil, poor
credit access, unfavorable tariff and limited market access, inadequate
LGU support and participation of cooperatives, insufficient irrigation
facilities and farm-to- mill/market roads.
The group has recommended the government: to prosecute smugglers,
efficiently collect tariffs and quickly remit auction proceeds to
the Agriculture Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF, or similar
facilities), and expeditiously disburse these funds to affected
sectors. Aggressive restructuring of farm sector debts and provision
of fresh working capital for viable projects by GFIs; decrease in
borrowing cost from Landbank; streamlining of lending procedures
and reduction of processing time by half; and creation of DTI-DA-DFA
trade facilitation group to follow through bilateral trade issues
and commitments.
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Slips to 48th Place
Philippine Competitiveness
| Comparing Competitiveness |
| Ranking of Selected Asian
Economies |
|
|
|
| Philippines |
36
|
48
|
| Singapore |
2
|
4
|
| Hong Kong |
7
|
13
|
| Taiwan |
10
|
7
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| Malaysia |
24
|
30
|
| South Korea |
28
|
23
|
| Thailand |
30
|
33
|
| Indonesia |
43
|
64
|
| Vietnam |
52
|
60
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| Source:
World Economic Forum |
The Global Competitiveness Report 2001
of the World Economic Forum has placed the Philippines at
48th rank in 2001 from 36th place in 2000. The ranking is
in terms of prospects for growth in GDP per capita within
five years (growth competitiveness). Meanwhile, in terms of
current competitiveness, the country slipped
to the 54th rank from 46th place.
The growth competitiveness index –
the basis for the ranking — is composed of three categories:
technology index where the Philippines placed 40th; public
institutions index (rank 64th); and macroeconomic environment
index (rank 28th). The rating of public institutions was determined
by: contracts and law sub-index, where the Philippines ranked
56th and corruption sub-index, where the Philippines placed
69th.
The Philippine economy’s decline in terms of the current
competitiveness index was attributed to the deterioration
of the sophistication of company operations and strategy to
45th rank from 43rd place and the quality of business environment
to 54th rank from 46th place
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 Casecnan
Multipurpose Irrigation and Power Project
A Big Boost to Central Luzon
Inaugurated on 12 October, the Casecnan Multipurpose Irrigation
and Power Project in Sitio Pauan, Barangay Villarica, Pantabangan,
Nueva Ecija, is reportedly the country’s first irrigation infrastructure
of its magnitude and one of the biggest of its kind in the world.
This US$650 million project is a combined irrigation facility which
diverts excess water from the Casecnan and Taan Rivers through a
long tunnel to a generating plant and to the rice lands of Central
Luzon. This was developed by CE Casecnan Energy and Water Company,
an affiliate of CalEnergy International, a US-based company whose
expertise is in the production and distribution of energy from diversified
fuel sources including geothermal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and
coal.
CalEnergy and its affiliates have total investments of US$1.4 billion
in the Philippines through the Casecnan Project and three geothermal
power plants in Leyte at Mahanagdong, Upper Mahiao and Malitbog
which provide electricity for Luzon and Cebu.
The Casecnan Project creates the infrastructure to support productive
farming and industrialization, further advancing the Philippines’
movement toward global competitiveness. It will generate power and
redirect water to irrigate 35,000 hectares of new ricelands while
boosting water supply to an additional 102,000 hectares of existing
ricelands in Nueva Ecija and other parts of Central Luzon. As such,
the Casecnan project is estimated to boost rice production by about
465,000 metric tons of rice per year.
The project will also provide additional power source to the National
Power Corporation’s Luzon Grid by as much as 603 GWh of electricity,
enough to power an additional 350,000 homes annually.
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