Rise, Philippines!

Outbursts of emotions and opinions have been prevalent since President Arroyo delivered her State of the Nation Address (SONA). Filipinos from all walks of life can be seen gathered to talk about political developments and their implications on the country’s growth prospects. Amid this, have we really pondered the best way to rise beyond the political scene? Specifically, can the Philippines succeed in its growth story with fast-rising competition in the region?

First, "competitiveness" is defined when a nation has created or shown prosperity, and sustained its capacity to compete in the modern global economy. One must look at the determinants of competitiveness to apply sophisticated approaches where we take into consideration national policies, the quantity and quality of specialized skills, as well as infrastructure and technology. It is therefore vital for anyone to know the real engines to be competitive, among which include science and technology, entrepreneurship, finance, logistics and education.

Luckily, the Philippines has been blessed with natural resources and a skilled labor pool, but these are not enough to support anyone’s claim that we are, in a sense, "competitive." The best scheme to weigh this is to go from a functional, intra-enterprise approach, to one that is inter-enterprise and external. Essentially, companies focus on cost reduction and attaining best practices to survive. Here, several departments or key units are formed to handle specific functions, and achieve some form of internal excellence when best practices are adopted within the corporate chain. To be competitive, however, these enterprises move beyond their walls to live up to the challenge of involving themselves through networks to attain industry leadership. Benchmarking has and will continue to be prevalent as each nation makes an effort to become a market leader.

Thus far, China is already being felt globally. Developed nations are flooded with relatively cheaper goods mainly because of China’s strong resolve to keep labor cost low. Hong Kong, meanwhile, is known for its business-friendly government policies, and its ability to achieve improved efficiency via higher productivity. Its constituents have been ranked second in the IMD World Competitiveness scoreboard, and more investors have continuously been attracted to do business in the country. Another commendable emerging story is Singapore, which has progressed in setting up its information and communication technology (ICT) hub. The bottomline: there is much to learn about how and why these emerging markets progressed, and identify those which are important to the local setting.

Within the Philippine context, competitiveness starts from our key people resources. Special talents and skills could only come to the fore when tedious administrative-related functions are streamlined. This way, people could focus more on decision-making and strategy formulation by pro-actively involving themselves in day-to-day operations. In a nutshell, these are all embraced within SourcePilipinas’ Exchange, whose membership has expanded exponentially. In fact, SourcePilipinas has aided enterprises’ participation in e-procurement exchanges, especially for those who do not want extra spending in terms of added fixed capital investment. eMarketplaces help companies move their competitive edge forward through various schemes that go well with the decision-making process. One could go through a competitive open auction if the awarding merit will be on the lowest price for homogenous items, and there are available features that can be utilized in case the decision criteria rest on other variables like after-sales service or quality, aside from obtaining an optimum price. Partner selections are also made possible given an eMarketplace’s expanding list of trading partners.

In summary, the Philippines is racing with time. Lengthy debates will not get us anywhere unless we act in a unified manner to move our country forward. At the end of the day, there’s much to learn and more to gain when we involve ourselves in a community that shares this ideal.

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Maritel Mallo-Atienza is the assistant general manager of SourcePilipinas. For queries, e-mail her at [email protected].