The following was written by INTEL General Manager Robin Martin about the
Filipinos (including the press, business people and myself) tend to dwell too much on the negative side and this affects the perception of foreigners, even the ones who have lived here for a while. The negative perception of the
Consider the following:
1. The great telecom infrastructure that we have now did not exist in 1995. 1995 was the year the telecom industry was deregulated. Since then billions of dollars have been invested in both fixed line and cellular networks producing a system with over 5,000 kms of fiber optic backbone at a world competitive cost. From a fixed line capacity of about 900,000 in 1995 we now have over 7 million. Cellular phones practically did not exist in 1995; now we have over 11 million line capacity.
2. The MRT, many of the EDSA flyovers including the Ayala Avenue flyover), the SKYWAY, Rockwell and Glorietta 4, the Fort, NAIA terminal 2 and 3 and most of the new skyscrapers were not yet built in 1995.
3. If you drive to the provinces, you will notice that national roads are now of good quality (international quality asphalt roads).
4. Philippine exports have increased by 600% over the past eight years. There are many, many more examples of progress over the last eight years. Philippine mangoes are now exported to the
Additional tidbits to make our people prouder:
1. INTEL has been in the
2. TEXAS INSTRUMENTS has been operating in
3. TOSHIBA laptops are produced in
4. If you drive a BENZ, BMW, or a VOLVO, there is a good chance that the ABS system in your car was made in the
5. TREND-MICRO, makers of one of the top anti virus software PC-Cillin (I may have mispelled this) develops its "cures" for viruses right here in Eastwood Libis,
6. Majority of the top ten U.S. Call Center firms in the
7. America Online (AOL) has 1,000 people in
8. PROCTOR & GAMBLE has over 400 people right here in Makati (average age 23 years) doing back-up office work to their Asian operations including finance accounting, Human Resources and payments processing.
9. Among many other things it does for its regional operations network in the Asia Pacific region here in
10. This is the first year ever that the
Next time you travel abroad and meet business associates tell them the good news. A big part of our problem is perception and one of the biggest battles can be won simply by believing and by making others believe.
This message is shared by good citizens of the
1 comments:
Hi Lumad Surigaonon,
Positive ideas are good to start with. Next, at this web site of yours, namely:
(http://invhictus.blogspot.com/2007/07/intel-gen-manager-robin-martin-writes.html) ...
... let us fix the key Filipino problem--weak foreign direct investment inflows to build factories, mines, farm, utilities, ports, offices. After decades, the total of these inflows to our country stands at $16.4 billion as reported in the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) database at www.cia.gov--click on World Factbook.
The $16.4 billion is only 1.5% of the $1.27 trillion into a neighboring "Asian Tiger region" with a smaller total population than ours.
(The region consists of four Asian Tigers: SKorea, Taiwan, Singapr, HKong with an 83 million combined population versus 91 million in Philipines.)
Compared to these Tigers, we are short $1.1 trillion in foreign direct investment inflows. That is an amazing, hard to believe shortage: 50 times as high as the total investment of foreigners and locals in the Philippines in 2007.
Foreign investors hate going to the Philippines. They have the technologies that we need, and big capital to invest-- 600 times annually compared to the Philippines, but they don't want to invest with us; they don't like our inferiority complex, our childish nationalism, our horribly restrictive Constitution.
They prefer Hell and Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, China plus Purgatory to locate in; anything but the Philippines and Indonesia, as you can check in the CIA web site.
This is a serious problem resulting in our lack of capital, technology and exports in the Philippines.
Thus, our goods and services dollar earnings (exports) in 2007, including $16 billion of OFW remittance inflows, was horribly tiny, coming to less than $70 billion, or less than 1/20th as high in the cited "Asian Tiger Region" that had $1.5 trillion of goods and services export earnings in 2007.
Hence, this Tiger region has had abundant export dollar earnings to import machines and technologies to get rich with and to employ their people.
This was true not just last year but in the preceding 40 years. That is, we have simply lacked dollar earnings as big to bless ourselves with needed imports of machines and technologies.
No wonder we are poor. We may have Intel and Texas Instruments in our country, but not a Toyota car making plant, not a General Electric power plant making plant, not a foreign plant making steel or assembling big numbers of cell phones, TVs, medical instruments, cameras, airplanes, and such.
Thus,our GDP in 2007 of $150 billion was far less than the "Asian Tiger region's" GDP of $1.3 trillion.
Now with their riches, the Tigers invest 26% of their GDP for their future growth. Now with our poverty, we can invest 14.5%, or far less. Those rich Tiger folks will thus get richer; we poor Pinoys poorer.
This problem has nothing to do with corruption.
Corrupt officials could steal money and then use the money to attract foreign investor partners to the Philippines, and this would benefit the Philippines, but they do not do it. And honest Filipinos could invest together to attract foreign investors to the Philippines. But, they don't team up to do it, either.
Neither one is helping itself or or their country. Both are lazy and negligent-- the honest more so than the corrupt, since honest Fiipinos probably outnumber the dishonest ones by 98% to 2%, or so.
Our failure to attract foreign capital and to export has forced many Filipinos to flee abroad as OFWs desperately looking for money.
Our failure to attract foreign resources and to win abroad at export wars is the key weakness of the nation and needs a solution. You can help fix the problem.
Come work with us at EPIC25, the "EcoPinas InvestorCorp" to explore and implement solutions. We have globally-competitive brains, hearts, spirits. If you have these assets, too, we need you. Or perhaps you only have muscle and enthusiasm and a mind eager to learn. We need that, too. To join us, go to our yahoogroups site at:
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/EPIC25
There help fix our nation's problems with your suggested policy and business ideas, or by learning and propagating our ideas similar to those of China, the Asian Tigers, Luxembourg (the richest nation in the world), and Warren Buffet--the richest human and best investor in the world in the past 50 years.
A final note: we don't want to fix the Philippine problem as good-hearted philantrophic guys. No, we want to be bad guys who will make maximum, big profits from fixing the terrible Philippine problems.
As "bad guys," we shall go for profits as obscene as possible. Obscene profits would lead to the best progress for the Philippines, in particular to these eight great outcomes:
1) To make the biggest profits, we first have to make the biggest sales. That would employ the most people. Good, no?
2) But, big sales would also mean that our products are very useful, hence, very popular. That is, big sales would imply our maximum usefulness to the world's peoples.
3) Next, big profits would mean that we know how to minimize costs-- we are globally efficient; we don't waste global resources; we do minimum damage to the world burning oil, making useless or frivolous proudcts; we produce the big sales at least cost.
4) Maximized profits wouold also mean that we would have maximum funds to re-invest in strong job creation and nation-building. We would grow fastest in usefulness to the world. Which is how things should. The most efficient, most useful groups in the world must dominate other groups.
5) If we grow very fast with maximum profits, we would get all the publicity. Hence, all honest but useless Filipinos, and all corrupt but also useless Fiipinos may change, and enviously follow us at being useful and profitable; that would benefit the country and the world;
6) Our riches would also enable us to rise in politics to kick out the honest but incompetent, and also kick out or de-elect the corrupt, while promoting honest achievers;
7) Our success would make us get emulated by the youth seven years old (when they become conscious of the world) to 27 years old; there would be among the youth more and better Philippine prospects for future nation-building than now;
8) As Warren Buffet has made 49% annually with his investment ways in the past 50 years, that is also our goal.
All of above has been known since Adam Smith's book in 1776: "Wealth of Nations" and earlier. It is those who seek maximum profits that build nations. But, good, non-profit priests from the time of Christ up to today have never built nations in the same way that a noiw useless, no-profit Gawad Kalinga in the Philippines will never earn dollars to import machines to create jobs. Thus, the poor but jobless wil be unable to earn money to maintain the Gawad Kalinga homes that will deteriorte into coffins for the poor.
Hope you are a bad boy and will come tou our bad site where we intent to be Tigers killing competitors in the global jungle. If you have a good Gawad Kalinga heart or are a Catholic Bishop, don't bother to come. If you are a killer Thomas Edison or a Tiger Bill Gates or a vulture Warren Buffet, or a dollar-earning, bad Elvis Presley or dollar-earning, seductive Marilyn Monroe, please rush over to join us.
Hope to see you at our yahoogroups site.
Norman Madrid
Economist, Medici Tiger Capital
New York City
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/EPIC25
(I used to teach economics in the Philipines, then in NYC.)
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