The million-jobs man

Amid all the prophets of doom, amid all the businessmen griping and wringing their hands in frustration, here’s one person who remains optimistic about the country. You have to be an optimist when you’re Luis "Cito" Lorenzo Jr., the man given the task of overseeing the Arroyo administration’s program to generate one million jobs nationwide, mainly in the agriculture sector.

President GMA must have borrowed the concept from former Education Secretary Edgardo Angara. But Kuya Edong should be pleased that the man in charge of the program is no stranger to agribusiness. Cito, at just 43 years old, heads Lapanday Foods Corp., one of the most successful agribusiness companies in the country.

Lapanday grew despite problems with communist insurgents and efforts by foreign multinationals to put the upstart Philippine company down. From a firm that started with an equity of just P3 million and loans of P132 million in 1982, Lapanday is turning into a multinational operation, with sales this year expected to hit $200 million despite a slump in the world prices of its main export, bananas.

Cito also chairs Del Monte Philippines Inc., which is expected to post $230 million in sales this year.

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Cito will have to give up these seats and divest if he ever accepts a regular Cabinet post in the Arroyo administration. He was in the short list for agriculture secretary when President GMA was forming her government. The post went to former sectoral representative Leonardo Montemayor, who over the past months has seen almost all offices under his department being taken away from his jurisdiction because of the President’s impatience over his performance.

President GMA was so dissatisfied with Montemayor that for a while she threatened to hold office at the Department of Agriculture just to get her programs in that sector moving. Why can’t President GMA just let go of him? She’s still repaying debts to the Left, although as far as I can tell, she lost that group a long time ago.

Anyway, Cito stresses that contrary to rumors, Montemayor’s post has not been offered to him. But Cito did accept his designation last month as a peso-a-year presidential adviser for agriculture and job generation.

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Joining him on a brief trip to Cagayan de Oro last week I asked Cito if he didn’t think he had the toughest job in the administration.

In the language of technocrats (something he’ll have to lose — must be the Wharton-Ateneo business education), he explained that we import tons of agricultural products. This means there’s a market here for these products, which we ourselves can produce. If we can increase productivity to meet the local market demand, we can generate more jobs.

One million is just a symbol, he said. A few hundred jobs generated here (680 in Jolo, for example), several dozens there – that’s progress. Cito is willing to be monitored closely; someone can keep a scorecard to show how he’s faring with the target of one million jobs.

"I always rise to the challenge. I always want to do something," he told me. It’s easy to whine and complain about the situation in the country, but how many of us try to do something about it? "Aside from the global recession, we are our own worst enemies," he said.

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It’s probably easier to feel optimistic when you tool around Metro Manila in your private helicopter and across the country on a Lear jet that flies at 45,000 feet, higher than a 747. But such amenities didn’t just fall into Cito’s lap, and you can’t help wanting to listen to his formula for progress.

For one, he refuses to let problems get the better of him: "You worry only about things you can control."

Sure he worries for the safety of his wife and four children (they’re all here), but he had bigger security concerns when Lapanday grappled with the communist problem in its plantations in Mindanao. Five Lapanday employees were killed by rebels.

By fighting back and at the same time working with the community, and through corporate responsibility, the situation stabilized. These days Lapanday counts among its 8,400 employees former communist and Muslim rebels.

"At the end of the day, what do our people really want? A better life for their family," Cito says. His job is to show people some ways of achieving this aim.

Cito refuses to be deterred by lopsided agricultural policies set by the World Trade Organization. We can go around some of them to protect our own products, he says. But he does get impatient about bureaucratic inaction and corruption. And he worries about the state of Philippine education: "It sucks."

The only difference is that unlike many of us, he’s not content with just whining and griping. "I am so frustrated and I wanna do something about it," Cito says.

Maybe he’ll generate those million jobs.

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NOTE FROM NANI: Justice Secretary Hernando Perez wrote to clarify that he knew the libel case former President Joseph Estrada filed against Manila Times was about IMPSA. Also, that what he (Perez) signed in connection with the deal was merely an opinion, not a contract or guaranty.

And also, that he’s no ogre. All right, Mr. Secretary, you’re not.