Domingo urges local industries to export more

MANILA, Philippines - Trade and Industry Secretary Gregory Domingo is urging leaders of the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI) to export more.

According to Domningo, competing in the domestic market is now like competing abroad as tariffs on imported goods get close to zero or zero by next year between ASEAN Free Trade Area members and five other trading partners in Asia.

He told leaders of domestic manufacturers and industries that his office has been working closely with the National Competitiveness Council and the Department of Interior and Local Government to ease the procedures by which businessmen deal with government, and help them compete better.

Complementary to these efforts at putting on the building blocks of a business-friendly environment, he said that local companies must export their products.

Domingo noticed that companies in countries that are moving up to the higher levels of the supply chain, like China, are now scouting for new sites for their factories and are taking a second look at the Philippines.

Local manufacturers, Domingo said, should take advantage of this trend by going into strategic partnerships or entering into subcontracting with the multinationals.

This will require them to focus on upgrading the quality of their manufactured goods and entail bigger investments in research and development.

In the recently-held Manufacturers and Producers Summit held in Makati, other resource speakers pointed out that in the last three decades or 30 years, the country’s industrial sector has stagnated.

Its stagnation, more than anything else, was seen by an Asian Development Bank economist as the main reason why so many Filipinos, particularly those who failed to get college education, could not find jobs.

The summit was specifically called by the FPI to jumpstart the creation up of an industrialization plan which has not been part of the development plans of most administrations after the late President Marcos.