Mission possible: Equality-generating businesses

While listening to the Papal award acceptance speech of Ramon del Rosario Jr. at the Manila Cathedral last week, I could not help but recall the most recent Oxfam report on inequality. The report, released to coincide with the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, states: “The wealth of the world’s five richest billionaires has more than doubled since the start of this decade, while 60 [percent] of humanity has grown poorer. For years, Oxfam has raised the alarm about widening and extreme inequality. As we enter 2024, the very real danger is that these extraordinary extremes are becoming the new normal. Corporate and monopoly power, as this paper shows, is an unrelenting inequality-generating machine.”

Quoting Pope Francis extensively in his speech, Ramon talked of how the Catholic Church’s supreme pontiff has been reminding his flock that action to lift the poor from the shackles of poverty is urgent and integral to the practice of the Catholic faith. He cited the Pope saying last June 2023 at the seventh annual World Day of the Poor that, “A great river of poverty is traversing our cities and welling to the point of overflowing; it seems to overwhelm us, so great are the needs of our brothers and sisters who plead for our help, support, and solidarity.”

Ramon’s acceptance speech, made in behalf of three other business leaders and five Church volunteers, then reiterated that, while truly grateful, the recognized business leaders acknowledge that the five volunteer honorees have given 50 years of their lives to doing volunteer work for their parishes and Catholic organizations like Caritas Manila. Ramon asserted that the highest Papal award conferred on him, called “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice,” “belong to and must rightfully be shared with each and every lay person and volunteer and staffer of the Church and its Caritas network.” He gave them further recognition saying that, “It is you who actually provide the authentic option for the poor and genuinely make the poor feel at home. It is you who do God’s work through Caritas and we are honored simply to work by your side.”

The three other recognized business leaders—Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Manuel V. Pangilinan, and Maria Goolsby—each in turn, as they delivered their acceptance speeches at a reception at the National Museum that followed the Mass and conferment, also stressed the invaluable role of volunteers and staff that make them deserving of the award even more.

Consistent with my experiences as executive director of Makati Business Club for seven years, Ramon, Fernando, and Manny humbly accepted the accolade from Rome. Ramon, in his speech, though did mention something important about their role as business leaders saying that “as board members or donors, we have indeed provided guidance, mobilized resources, and given sustained support …” This, for me, is important to highlight because I have always believed that a significant part of the solution can and should be led by the private sector. While the Oxfam report argues that “a more equal world is possible if governments effectively regulate and reimagine the private sector,” I insist that it will be disastrous, especially with the continuing global trends of rising populism, to leave the solution to governments alone. This is one time that I will caution my colleagues at Oxfam to be careful what we wish for!

The Oxfam report asserts that, “The 2020s offer opportunities for leaders to take our world in a bold, new, fairer direction. This is yet to happen. An era of widening inequality has coincided with a narrowing of economic imagination. We are living through what appears to be the start of a decade of division: in just three years, we have experienced a global pandemic, war, a cost-of-living crisis, and climate breakdown. Each crisis has widened the gulf—not so much between the rich and people living in poverty, but between an oligarchic few and the vast majority.”

I believe that many business leaders are cognizant of the dangerous inequality trends and are willing to take action as groups like Oxfam ring the alarm bells. These leaders and their businesses are already working with counterparts in the Church, academe, and for-impact-organizations. Oxfam’s inequality reports of the future will do well to recognize these initiatives, some of which are business-led and private sector-driven.

Leaders like Ramon, Fernando, and Manny deserve the Pope’s recognition and thanks because they know only too well that their mission must be to transform businesses into equality-generating machines. Well done, sirs!

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Peter Angelo V. Perfecto was former executive director of Makati Business Club, works with the Phinma group and chairs Oxfam Pilipinas. Email: [email protected].

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Business Matters is a project of Makati Business Club ([email protected]).