Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Do we need a trouble shooter?

It is welcome news that the Trade Secretary wants to create economic zones for manufacturers producing for the local market so that local regulations don’t undermine their operations with additional burdens and costs! And the administration’s investment agenda is laudable indeed and so are their efforts. What it needs besides is to truly focus on execution. Moving forward on the requisite next steps of the key infrastructure projects and strategic industries should be the focus of the trouble-shooter, for instance?

Focus and execution . . . will be the marching orders if President Aquino indeed wants a trouble shooter to raise the ‘success probability’ of the administration’s agenda? Without the bias for focus and execution we would undermine our best efforts? Change is never easy – and so benchmarking is indeed a chore and demands leadership? We can’t be like them because they’re bigger, and we can’t be like them because they’re smaller? We can’t be like them because they’re liberal, and we can’t be like them because they’re autocratic? Change is not natural – and so we’re tripping all over groping for excuses, and tempting fate? Opportunity knocks when we seek not when we run away from it?

It appears the bidding for key infrastructure projects keep changing time-wise? Key players involved in the projects – from idea generation to actual execution – should be identified and made to account for transparency’s sake? And the trouble-shooter should have an ongoing interaction with the media? Project management isn’t something foreign, and thus the administration should define timelines and control points that must be highlighted for review and media reporting? And as importantly, the trouble-shooter could demand proactive management of every project so that there is clarity each step of the way, including enabling legislations?

Transparency enhances integrity that must characterize our dealings with the private sector, including foreign investors – that is why corruption matters, i.e., we can’t even begin to move forward in our efforts to right our economic ship if integrity is suspect? Then again, we can’t keep to the assumption that anything or anyone big would simply take advantage of our poverty, weakness and vulnerability? Put simply, between the lack of transparency and the integrity that comes with it on the one hand; and our defensiveness when dealing with big foreign investors on the other, we are bound to yield less than the optimal conclusions? It takes integrity and maturity and hard work and creativity to operate beyond a parochial mental model?

China’s trajectory says they would become the biggest economy. But not too long ago they could not even raise their counterpart-equity shares in their joint-ventures and so they allowed foreigners to organize holding companies which the latter could wholly own. Instead of risking diminished foreign investment levels, they successfully generated more investments that brought in technology, innovation, talents, products and markets. Today they are in better stead investment-wise than the US because they don’t have to borrow capital; while the US is the world’s largest net borrower. Lee Kuan Yew writes that they were a third-world before becoming a first-world economy – and the world’s most competitive nation, despite its size. And Thailand and Malaysia are moving in the right direction. It is incongruous to rationalize that we’re under-invested in technology, innovation, talent, products and markets because we’re a small, poor country? Size and poverty don’t stop progressive nations? To be parochial in the globalized, 21st century economy doesn’t compute? (And so Obama is on TV speaking to high school students in Miami talking about ‘winning the future via reform, responsibility and results – and as importantly, to create a culture of high expectations; not only of students, but of principals and teachers. And schools that have replaced incompetent principals and teachers are raised as models’, heeding Bill Gates’ education crusade.)

With a trouble-shooter focused on the execution of the administration’s agenda, President Aquino could then tell us whether we are shooting our own foot or are in fact doing our share to right our economic ship? We don’t change an outcome if we don’t change our assumptions, so says Einstein? In modern parlance, ‘garbage-in, garbage-out’ – are we throwing garbage into the hopper?

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