PHL PRIORITIZES GOVERNANCE, INFRA TO STRENGTHEN INDUSTRY SECTOR — NEDA
During the seminar on Taking the Right Growth Road-Manufacturing and Modern Services on the sidelines of the 45th Asian Development Bank (ADB) Board of Governor’s Meeting, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano W. Paderanga, Jr. emphasized that the Philippines, while prioritizing good governance, is also working hard to fill up infrastructure gaps to be able to develop a stronger industry sector.
“There are two things that we consider: one is governance issues that we had in the past which clouds the picture. Likewise, we still have to fill up our infrastructure gaps. Once we have all these, we would have a very good base for the industry sector, particularly manufacturing,” Paderanga said. He cited China’s strategy of decreasing the cost of moving people’s goods by building roads and bringing down the cost of doing business as a model for industrial transformation.
Paderanga, who was the country’s speaker in the said seminar, also stressed that the Philippines has an increasing effective demand in the global market given the strength of its services sector.
“We are lucky that BPO and IT were available given our resources and these help us fill all the gaps. We are also lucky that we now have a government that really works on governance issues. We feel that this is a very strong platform for which we can finally take off,” he said.
Meanwhile, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Vice President Hiroto Arakawa — who was also speaker in the same event — said that while the Philippines has certain qualities that further strengthen its services sector such as creativity, the country should capitalize on its more transferable potentials.
“First of all is the presence of highly-educated labor, including vocational training. Second is supremacy in the most-spoken languages such as English or French. The Philippines is very good in the English language. Third is the presence of deregulated telecommunications sector which enable access to the global market,” Arakawa enumerated.
He further said that technological advancement in the telecommunications sector, reform in the education sector and growth diagnostics are necessary for the country to facilitate or nurture these potentials.
Other speakers during the seminar were: ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda, JICA Senior Advisor and Hitotsubashi University Professor Emeritus Shinji Asanuma, Paris School of Economics Director Francois Bourguignon and AgenceFrancaisede Developpement (AFD) CEO DovZerah.
MR No. 2012-034
07 May 2012
