Arsenio Balisacan, National Economic Development Authority Director General and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary, will speak at a forum this afternoon at the Cebu City Sports Club on the Philippine economy and prospects for the year. This should be interesting. What caused last year’s surprising high 6.6 percent economic growth? Given that the global economy is still weak after almost five years since the 2008 to 2009 Global Recession, was that growth a fluke? If not, can we sustain it this year?
Critics of the new Aquino government are saying that economic growth is faster now but widespread poverty still persists. In other words, it is highly exclusive growth that makes life good only for a few, not the majority. What has the government’s top economist and planner got to say about this? Why has inclusive growth been so elusive? How can this be made inclusive growth to wipe out poverty?
For some years now, Metro Manila and Cebu boasted of two rapidly growing industries – real estate and business process outsourcing (BPO) or information technology (IT). Is their growth for real? If real, how long will growth continue? In the case of real estate, for example, will we follow the fate of Japan in the 1990s and the US not so long ago where booming business suddenly imploded?
According to Colliers International’s recent paper, “with the increasing entries of BPO firms in Cebu, both local and major developers have ramped up their project portfolios, delivering over 80,000 sq. m of new office space in 2012 with roughly 150,000 sq. m more due for completion from 2013 to 2014.” Despite the substantial supply last year, the vacancy rate in the metropolitan district dropped to 2.8 percent from its standing at 5.5 percent in 2011.
After the Secretary, Claro Cordero will speak about growth and investment prospects in real estate and related industries in the country, particularly on what is happening in Metro Manila and Cebu. Cordero should be very interesting to hear. He is Jones Lang, LaSalle-Philippines’ head of research, consulting and valuation with in-depth knowledge of the industry.
Our own Joel Yu of the Cebu Investment Promotion Center follows Cordero to expound on the growth and investment prospects in the BPO and related IT industries. Do you know that for various reasons, many US companies are seen to in-source their back-office work? If this is true, what will this mean for Cebu?
In last Wednesday’s visioning workshop organized by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. with the help of the Japan International Cooperation Agency consultants for Mega Cebu, many interesting combinations of words were proposed to make Cebu eye-catching or attractive to foreign tourists and investors. One includes “innovative, creative and competitive,” another “livable and sustainable,” and almost 50 more. I suggested “your business is our business” but the most widely accepted by the workshop participants was this: “Mega Cebu, Making Waves.” The last word is actually an acronym for five words but for now I will not mention them here. I will leave it to the Mega Cebu people to reveal them once the slogan is formally accepted by the Metro Cebu Development Coordination Board. Suffice it to say that “making waves” is already something. To me it conjures images of Cebu breaking new ground and amazing many people or make them envious of Cebu.
The workshop outlines the direction that Mega Cebu will take in the future up to the year 2050. Why 2050? Well, that was not explained. It is obviously “something” though. For one, it is the middle of the century where we can stop and measure what we have done.
The year 2050 is still 37 years away. What will Cebu be then? What will we have then, individually or collectively as a community or as consumers or producers, investors or workers? In the proposed outline of development of Cebu’s future up to year 2050, much was still devoted into making full use of where we are becoming to be competitive like tourism and BPO or education (teaching English). Will they still click in 2050? Tourism will remain, I am sure. With higher income in the future, we want more travel, more pleasure. I am not sure of the other two.
There was also a strong line presented in the workshop about making Metro Cebu’s development more compact. I guess this means concentrated development in every local government unit in Metro Cebu (there are 13 of them) but which are supposed to be highly interconnected also through a much improved means of transport.
Compact development, I fully agree. By pursuing this, we put as many people as possible in one place where most of their needs are provided within easy reach, without taking a ride, if possible. That saves space and money and also helps create a more environmentally sound community. This also means less pollution from combustion of oil used in cars or less noise from running cars. A compact community also means economy on the part of the local government units in providing basic services to their people.
Going backward, 37 years ago there was no computer on my table or cell phone in my pocket. What will I have 37 years from now? I bet a lot of things I have now will not be there anymore in 2050.
This is the product of creative destruction to give way to the new. But making new products, developing new methods of production or finding new sources of raw materials or a new place to market one’s product do not come easily. We need entrepreneurs to do that. We should include in the Mega Cebu plan the identification and development of new entrepreneurs.
Many claim to be entrepreneurs today simply because they are in business. That is not true because most often they just do what others are doing. Entrepreneurs are not followers, they are trailblazers. Without them, I am afraid Mega Cebu in 2050 will just mean more of the same. That is not development.