The Export Development Council’s (EDC) website pages the writer had browsed recently seem to have disappeared? Or is the website under construction or re-construction or re-design? In any case, it gave the writer the opportunity to browse the website of the NCC or National Competiveness Council.
The NCC website reads: “The NCC was formed in October 2006 as a Public-Private Task Force on Philippine Competitiveness by virtue of Presidential Executive Order (EO) No. 571 to address the improvement of the country’s competitiveness from the bottom third of competitiveness rankings to the top three by 2010.” (It is early in 2010, but do we expect to lift our competiveness ranking to the top three by year’s end?) Two of the NCC’s focus areas call for: providing seamless infrastructure network and developing energy cost competitiveness and self-sufficiency.
If it is not obvious yet, the writer offers specifics – and is committed to engaging opinion makers and leaders. For example, he has talked about Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs – and it appears that we Filipinos are still struggling to attain the most basic of needs: water, food, power, etc., etc. Net, the goal of the NCC is simply too lofty – given that while we have incurred record levels of debt over several decades and several administrations, we’re still at ground zero. It simply is not doable! If we are to keep a mature optimism we must first be dogged and get the foundation (infrastructure) of these basic human (Filipino) needs right!
Many times initiatives fail because people approach challenges in a linear fashion – not surprising because logic dictates that we move from step one then step two, etc. The writer has talked about “starting with the end in view.” This is not an alien concept because we grew up being asked: what do you want to be when you grow up? (For instance, in tourism, to develop a competitive instinct, our thought process could be: Which are our benchmark countries in developing our initiative? How many tourists do they attract? How many can we attract and should attract? How much revenue must we generate? Are we focused on the 12 top tourist attractions – focus, being the operative word? How does the infrastructure network of these attractions match up against those of other countries? How does our cost structure match up? How do our marketing efforts match up?)
The end point of competitiveness is a product or service that is preferred by the customer or the consumer. Yet it has to be in context. Competiveness in an economy must come from the elements of our economic output or GDP: domestic and foreign output. Our domestic output already outstrips our neighbors’! Where we have a gaping hole is in our foreign output! And this is where we’ve fallen flat on our face – because we don’t have the confidence and skills-set to compete, i.e., compelling products with healthy margins, in the international arena; or we simply are inward-looking and parochial, it is not even on our radar screen?
Net, our initiatives, defined by their end goal, will have two elements that: (a) spell out the objectives we must pursue to drive our foreign output, e.g., our strategic initiatives; and (b) spell out the requisite infrastructure that will directly enable these strategic initiatives, including basic infrastructure, i.e., water, food, power, etc. It will take us years to move up the competiveness ranking, but we can start with a sharper perspective of our end goal! (But we’ll never make it if integrity and excellence in our initiatives are absent – while influence peddling and small thinking and incompetence dominate? For example, the BCDA’s handling of the SCTEX contract is sheer incompetence! This is a major project yet we failed to prequalify the right bidders thus are left with two unacceptable bids? We can’t attract world-class contractors – they will not bet on us, as shown by a European bank that unloaded their Philippine bonds, being the worst performer this year; and thus raising our cost of borrowing?)
The NCC website reads: “The NCC was formed in October 2006 as a Public-Private Task Force on Philippine Competitiveness by virtue of Presidential Executive Order (EO) No. 571 to address the improvement of the country’s competitiveness from the bottom third of competitiveness rankings to the top three by 2010.” (It is early in 2010, but do we expect to lift our competiveness ranking to the top three by year’s end?) Two of the NCC’s focus areas call for: providing seamless infrastructure network and developing energy cost competitiveness and self-sufficiency.
If it is not obvious yet, the writer offers specifics – and is committed to engaging opinion makers and leaders. For example, he has talked about Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs – and it appears that we Filipinos are still struggling to attain the most basic of needs: water, food, power, etc., etc. Net, the goal of the NCC is simply too lofty – given that while we have incurred record levels of debt over several decades and several administrations, we’re still at ground zero. It simply is not doable! If we are to keep a mature optimism we must first be dogged and get the foundation (infrastructure) of these basic human (Filipino) needs right!
Many times initiatives fail because people approach challenges in a linear fashion – not surprising because logic dictates that we move from step one then step two, etc. The writer has talked about “starting with the end in view.” This is not an alien concept because we grew up being asked: what do you want to be when you grow up? (For instance, in tourism, to develop a competitive instinct, our thought process could be: Which are our benchmark countries in developing our initiative? How many tourists do they attract? How many can we attract and should attract? How much revenue must we generate? Are we focused on the 12 top tourist attractions – focus, being the operative word? How does the infrastructure network of these attractions match up against those of other countries? How does our cost structure match up? How do our marketing efforts match up?)
The end point of competitiveness is a product or service that is preferred by the customer or the consumer. Yet it has to be in context. Competiveness in an economy must come from the elements of our economic output or GDP: domestic and foreign output. Our domestic output already outstrips our neighbors’! Where we have a gaping hole is in our foreign output! And this is where we’ve fallen flat on our face – because we don’t have the confidence and skills-set to compete, i.e., compelling products with healthy margins, in the international arena; or we simply are inward-looking and parochial, it is not even on our radar screen?
Net, our initiatives, defined by their end goal, will have two elements that: (a) spell out the objectives we must pursue to drive our foreign output, e.g., our strategic initiatives; and (b) spell out the requisite infrastructure that will directly enable these strategic initiatives, including basic infrastructure, i.e., water, food, power, etc. It will take us years to move up the competiveness ranking, but we can start with a sharper perspective of our end goal! (But we’ll never make it if integrity and excellence in our initiatives are absent – while influence peddling and small thinking and incompetence dominate? For example, the BCDA’s handling of the SCTEX contract is sheer incompetence! This is a major project yet we failed to prequalify the right bidders thus are left with two unacceptable bids? We can’t attract world-class contractors – they will not bet on us, as shown by a European bank that unloaded their Philippine bonds, being the worst performer this year; and thus raising our cost of borrowing?)
No comments:
Post a Comment