‘… tourism and business (even manufacturing) can be key pillars in any economic resurgence, as many of our neighbors have long come to realize.’
IT seems inevitable: whenever Filipinos get to travel abroad, they get to compare and contrast what we have at home to what they see abroad. And because nine times out of ten they visit a second or first-world country, the comparison always finds the Philippines getting the “short end of the stick.”
The usual comments can be amusing but painful. Whether it’s walking around Bangkok’s Chinatown or mixing with the crowd in Macau’s Senado Square, friends would comment that had this been a scene in a city in the Philippines there would be picked pockets or slashed bags. One even said: notice how tourists here (in Hong Kong) wear their backpacks on their backs, while Filipinos in the Philippines wear their backpacks on their chests.
The comments come furiously fast at airports. Even I caught myself thinking as I saw the construction ongoing in the airports of Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong — as if their existing airports weren’t big enough (obviously not!). While they keep building in one location, focused on growing their tourism and business sectors, we keep resorting to stop-gap measures — a main gateway with basically just one runway!!!
So, when both Cebu Pacific and PAL report plans to purchase new wide-bodied aircraft, I could only go “Oh no.” More aircraft to use our single runway complex of terminals? Jeesas.
I can go on and on with a litany of put-downs that Filipinos exclaim when abroad, comparing reality back home with reality in other countries. But I think what’s more important is to list what I think are basic questions our policymakers should be focusing on.
First: how can we make the Philippines as a destination more attractive to tourists and businessmen, including manufacturers?
We are a distant second to everyone else in our region (save maybe two or three other ASEAN members) in both tourism and manufacturing, and there’s no way we will win hands down on “ease of doing business” metrics except perhaps in the matter of widespread use of the English language.
But why should it matter that we become an attractive destination for tourism and business? Because tourism and business (even manufacturing) can be key pillars in any economic resurgence, as many of our neighbors have long come to realize.
The answer to this question will require a review of our physical infrastructure and the legal structures in place, many of which are in dire need of repair or revision or amendment, if not total overhaul or replacement.
The second question I like to be asked is this: against which neighbor will we judge our failure or success?
In a world where opportunities (as well as ills) are global in nature, every country is competing against everyone else for limited resources. This competition is even more fierce (if not too readily apparent on the surface) between and among all of us within ASEAN, as we have almost similar resources for exploration and products for export.
The need to benchmark ourselves against our best neighbors is in keeping with the saying that you can’t manage what you can’t measure – and we can’t manage our progress (or lack of it) unless we have those benchmarks.
But we all know why a succession of our leaders are wary of being measured against peers in the region: we will be found wanting and responsibility will be laid at their feet. And no one wants to be tagged as responsible for not delivering on promises, even if this failure is indeed a failure of administration after administration.
And that’s why Pinoys abroad always end up comparing home and away and finding home wanting.
Because no one wants to ask, or if asked, no one wants to answer very basic questions!
