Immediate wage hike not good for medium-sized businesses – Concepcion

‘Go Negosyo’ founder Joey Concepcion (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO)

MANILA, Philippines — It’s better to focus on creating more jobs, rather than implementing an immediate wage hike, Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion said at the “Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon” public briefing on Wednesday.

Concepcion was referring to the proposed P100 daily wage hike, which recently garnered the approval of the Senate.

“Not everybody can afford a 100-peso wage increase. Maybe larger corporations can. Those who are doing well. But there are many also that are still not doing well. No,” he said.

“Our micro-entrepreneurs — I guess, they will be exempted from that wage increase. But what about the medium-sized ‘negosyantes’ [business people]? They will be affected.”

“I think we remain focused on creating more jobs for our people. Hopefully, some of our people will start to upskill and reskill themselves,” Concepcion added.

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He echoed the sentiment of other business leaders who said it would be difficult to put the wage increase in place at once.

He recalled past administrations carried out wage adjustments in tranches.

“What we should do is not implement a 100-peso [wage hike] in one go. Let’s start to spread that over a period of time,” he said.