It’s not growth . . .

. . . It’s re-building that is our challenge!

We will always grow so long as we have OFW remittances, e.g., $18 billion – it’s not rocket science; it’s all gravy! But we have not disputed the ADB’s prognosis that it would take 175 years for us to attain developed country status!

Then it would be sad if we sat on our laurels growing between 4% and 5% or even 7% to 9%. They are a drop in the bucket given the mountain we have to scale, if not irrelevant – and so ADB said it rather coyly?

For many years on his 7:09 AM commuter train from Stamford to Grand Central in Manhattan the writer would read that inflation was trailing the 3% US GDP growth – that there was real growth in the multi-trillion $ economy. That would be a good yardstick for their US business, substantial by itself. But then he would scan foreign currency exchange rates because the business overseas was even bigger. A strong US dollar was good for the US business but bad for the overseas business because the consolidated numbers were in US dollars. But in the finally analysis: (a) in the developed markets growth was key, (b) in the developing and emerging markets expansion was the driver given their greater growth rates, but (c) if a market was uncompetitive, it was imperative to redefine and focus the business to achieve competitive advantage and to rapidly upgrade and/or create the requisite infrastructure . . . and Execute, with a capital E – no “paki” or “puede na ‘yan”. (It’s not one size fits all!)

A global business is on its toes intervening in markets as demanded by their respective challenges, i.e., (a) fortify systemic and industrial infrastructure to leverage developed markets’ growth; (b) build up infrastructure in developing and emerging markets to exploit potential to the hilt and (c) restructure uncompetitive businesses. No punch is pulled!

Countries can be asleep at the wheels – they don’t disappear in a sea of red ink like badly managed businesses. But they yield massive poverty. And (bad) country management doesn’t explain to the poor . . . before they’re fired! (No role for Donald Trump here?)

The question we should be asking ourselves is: how do we re-build our economy? We need to upgrade or create the requisite systemic and industrial infrastructure and get strategic industries globally competitive in order to raise GDP significantly. To keep our OFWs as the foundation of that infrastructure while industry goes on their merry ways – uncompetitive regionally or globally – is a disaster waiting to happen, if it has not happened yet! It’s the modern-day version of Juan Tamad – elsewhere it’s a Dutch disease?

The 21st century world while interconnected is tough and unforgiving that we must draw strength from “our image and likeness” – which was why Adam and Eve were driven out of paradise? To tell the succeeding generations what the real world would be like; and what we must be like – tough, nothing less?

We want to be socialists instead? Even kinder and gentler Europe didn’t elect socialists in recent elections! And the writer’s 25-year old Bulgarian assistant would have a fit! As his sister, parents and the organization the writer consults with. They started in the middle of nowhere 100 kilometers from the Black Sea trying to be marketers in a country of 8 million. But 6 years later has the infrastructure marketing to 220 million in 17 ex-socialist states, and making beachhead in a couple of Western markets.

We’re sophisticated and educated but we can’t have the world – big and small countries – wait for us; if the train has not left us yet? (Competitiveness is still at our “kuro-kuro” level; others are at their “Windows 7”!)