ABAC Philippines presented some best practices in social enterprises in the country at the last Apec Business Advisory Council meeting in Singapore in April. These best practices were presented as innovative business models that can support entrepreneurship, encourage the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and help promote inclusive growth.
May 13 will come and go. Another set of elections will be completed and the promises we heard during the preelection period will be forgotten, to be heard once more come the 2016 elections.
I have participated in many commencement exercises, and presided over a number of them. None was more memorable or more moving than the graduation I attended three weeks ago at the Apu Palumgawan Cultural Education Center (APC) in Bendum, Bukidnon.
The next three years, from 2013 to 2016, are critical years for the Philippines. They represent the last three years of the Aquino administration—the second half of the six-year journey to completed reforms and better governance. Coming off a first half that saw the country growing from strength to strength and gaining in visibility on the global stage, the second half will bring greater attention, higher expectations, and more pressure to deliver results. It will be equally important to think about institutionalizing reforms so they become irreversible. The reforms must outlast the term of the present administration. These will be its greatest legacy. We all have a role to play in creating this legacy.
Today’s Business Matters column should have been written by Prof. Felipe “Fil” Alfonso. Unfortunately, Fil passed away last April 5, a week before he was to turn 76. His passing marks a loss to the business community, especially because of his passionate commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR), or what many refer to as the business of doing good.
This Latin interrogative sentence became memorable as the title of a Hollywood film that won multiple Oscar awards, including one for Peter Ustinov playing the role of the Roman Emperor Nero. The spectacle and the love story perhaps distract from the context and the import of the question.
The latest Sabah incident recalls again how the countries of Southeast Asia took shape from the territorial fragments cut up by foreign colonial powers. The task of ensuring the fit of the jigsaw pieces they inherited still occupies national governments.
It’s one of the key measures of our competitiveness and a report titled “The Ease of Doing Business,” prepared by the International Finance Corp. (IFC, a part of the World Bank Group), measures precisely that for the last 10 years. The report tracks the ease of doing business across 10 important processes or transactions which any business must undertake with a government agency or agencies. The key measures are the number of steps, the amount of time (measured in days), and the cost of going through these transactions. In some cases, it simply measures the presence or absence of a mechanism that offers investors some protection or access to information.
The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), which pioneered the people’s involvement in the electoral exercises of 1984 and 1986 (when President Ferdinand Marcos agreed to call a snap election), is back.
As a young lawyer, I used to complain to my mentor, Allison J. Gibbs, that often tax laws defy common sense. He would reply that tax laws and their implementation are simply exactions of the state to which logic or common sense take a back seat.
The message is hardly new: Prosperity, perhaps survival, in the 21st-century business environment requires enterprises to expand beyond national boundaries. What is surprising is that Japan should feel the need to preach a message whose practice it had pioneered and in which it had excelled.
Our column last Jan. 19 welcomed the members, staffers and guests of the Apec Business Advisory Council (Abac) Meeting that was held on Jan. 20 to 23 here in Manila. Abac brings together business leaders from each of the Apec’s 21 economies to identify policy priorities and key concerns of the business sector.
