Industrializing our countryside

My last piece on development beyond Manila provoked a recently returned expat Filipino worker to share first-hand accounts on how his former host country of Vietnam had already been practicing what I’m preaching. Ariel Trinidad, a master’s degree holder in development management from UP Los Baños, worked as an English teacher there for nine years. He would thus know true development when he sees it.

He described a visit to a colleague’s village in Tien Phong some 30 kilometers south of Hanoi, where he witnessed how the Vietnamese make countryside development real via small-scale rural industries. “Amidst farmlands, most of the houses in the village contained workshops or warehouses related to making bed linens: pillow covers, bedsheets, bedcovers, blankets, etc. Their village market has a trade center for the various makers, and a blanket, bed and pillow cover set was priced at around P500 six years ago.” His Vietnamese colleague recounted to him how this industry began and grew, as her grandfather was one of its early pioneers.

“In the 1950s during idle months of the crop season, her grandfather and a few men in the village would go to surrounding towns carrying sewing machines on their bicycles. Mind you, these were the manual, de-padyak type of sewing machines. They would go as far as Hai Phong 80 kilometers away, and even towns farther than 100 kilometers. They would repair mosquito nets, blankets, beddings, etc. In time, some families trusted them enough to allow them to bring items back to Tien Phong village for repair, to be returned at a later date. A factory set up by the military for making uniforms was later established near their village. Some people also started making some beddings for sale.

“The boom started in the early 1990s when family workshops started copying items made by Korean brands in the south of Vietnam around Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Thereafter, Korean companies also set up factories in and around the village. Today, as you walk around the village, you can see one house operating a big embroidery machine, several sewing machines in another—each household operating one step in the production process.” Here is a case where residents in a village make up the links in the value chain for a product that sees a much wider market well beyond the confines of the village itself.

Ariel also worked for three months in the village of Tan Phong in Ha Giang Province very near the Chinese border, up in the mountains 1,300 meters above sea level. The village has a cooperative that processes tea, even as an older and bigger tea factory was operating in the town center 5 km away. “It surprised me that both factories seemed to be running at full capacity during the harvest season that happens two times a year, which means that they must be making enough money. Their teas are packaged in foil vacuum-packs and in powder form as well. Other villages in the district bottle rice and fruit wines, or dry fruits into snack items.”

He noted how small-scale manufacturing thrives in small households in Vietnam. “I recently returned to my former boarding house in the outskirts of Hanoi. The ground floor is now a workshop making hats and caps, operated by a couple and helped by another sewer who comes during the day. In the evening the couple’s two children help out. They churn out hundreds of hats and caps every two-three days for tour companies. I used to see house-workshops like these in Pasig. I told the hatmaker that the caps I see now sold in the Philippines are made in China. Sad.”

I couldn’t help relating Mr. Trinidad’s account to the fact that Vietnam succeeded in meeting all the United Nations’ poverty reduction targets under the Millennium Development Goals well ahead of the 2015 deadline, while we failed to meet ours. I’ve also heard too many stories of how our government itself is seen as the barrier to setting up and growing a small business, through cumbersome requirements and documents, and insensitive local governments. I believe we can learn a lesson or two from our erstwhile lagging neighbor, which has since passed us by in so many ways. Sad, indeed.

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