Business leaders on Wednesday drew attention to the hidden cost of doing business in the community level, noting the need for national government officials to intervene.
Speaking at a panel during the Pilipinas Conference 2023 on Wednesday, Cezar Consing, Ayala Corp. chief executive officer, said such cost is particularly pressing for businesses that have low margins or minimal margin of error to work around, making investments in communities hard.
“There are a lot of unwritten hidden costs to doing business. More recently, I see them more at the local level. And if you’re a firm that is trying to do business nationwide, it’s those costs that are so hard to quantify,” Consing said.
Consing did not specify but Christian Gonzalez, International Container Terminal Services Inc. executive vice president and global corporate head, categorized these costs as “friction regulation from intertwined bodies of government…everything down to the barangay level.”
Consing said: “If you’re guessing your costs, and you don’t know what they are, and they surprise you, I think it’s a real detriment to investment.” he
Gonzalez meanwhile cited as an example the horrendous traffic a local government order caused in Metro Manila in 2014 prohibiting container trucks to ply the roads in one city during daytime.
“You’re talking billions of dollars of investment from the public and the private, over time, of an industry that’s so critical … (to) the economic heartbeat of the country. We need government at the highest levels to look at the weakest point in the chain that we’re all involved in, understand what is creating the weakness in those particular links, and use political will to solve it,” he said.
Nina Aguas, Insular Life executive chairman, said the government should push for more accountability and transparency.
“In terms of regulations, for example, I want things to be more simple. Just the tax regime alone, it’s just too complicated. And having experience how it was working in Singapore, for example, or like our business is opening in Singapore, you talk about hidden cost of setting up, it takes only two or three hours to be able to start a business within the day. So it’s not days,” she said.
Aguas also said when filing for individual tax return in Singapore, the person is audited before starting payments and gets a year to settle the entire amount.
“There’s no corruption, it’s all like technology driven. So that makes it a lot easier… It’s very transparent. The process is very simple. So I’d really like that for the Philippines,” she added.
