* This is my article in BusinessWorld last June 18, 2018.
Last June 6, I attended the “Seminar on Protecting your
Trademarks and Inventions Overseas” jointly organized by the Philippine Chamber
of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) and the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO), held at the PCCI building in McKinley Hill, Taguig City.
The main audience of that seminar were entrepreneurs and
companies big and small to help them be aware of existing intellectual property
rights (IPR) rules and their protection, commercialization, licensing and
dispute resolution. I do not represent any SME or big company but I was invited
there by Jess Varela, Chairman of PCCI Committee on IPR.
The three important speakers that day were Dennis Broze
and Peter Willimott of WIPO Office in Singapore and Atty. Allan Gepte,
Commissioner of the Tariff Commission and former Director-General of the
Intellectual Property Office (IPO).
Then last June 13, I attended the 6th Ease of Doing
Business (EODB) Summit 2018 at the PICC, organized by the Department of Trade
and Industry (DTI). It is an annual event sponsored by the DTI with one
important goal — to raise or improve the Philippines’ global ranking in the
World Bank’s (WB) Doing Business (DB) annual reports. The DB 2018 report was
recently released and the Philippines’ global rank has worsened, compared to
its ranking in the last two or three years.
This year, the EODB 2018 event is more optimistic because
of the passage of the “Ease of Doing Business Act of 2018” or RA 11032 which
was signed into law only last month. The DTI and various agencies including
SEC, LRA, BIR, BOC, BFP, LGUs have adopted various measures to hasten the law’s
implementation.
Among the important speakers in the EODB 2018 were DTI
Secretary Ramon Lopez, who is also the Chairman, Ease of Doing Business and
Anti-Red Tape Advisory Council; Senators Juan Miguel Zubiri and Aquilino “Koko”
Pimentel III, and Mr. Guillermo Luz, former Co-Chairman of the National
Competitiveness Council (NCC). Sen. Zubiri is the main author of the law in the
Senate and also the Majority Leader while Sen. Pimentel is former Senate
President and now Chairman of the Committee on Trade.
In both the PCCI-WIPO and DTI events, the over-riding
subject is competitiveness of the Philippine economy and its businesses.
Below are results of three annual reports, the WB’s DB,
World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), and WIPO,
INSEAD and Johnson Cornell University’s Global Innovation Index (GII) annual
reports.
Numbers in parentheses represent the number of countries
and economies covered in that particular annual report.
While the results in global ranking vary among the three
reports, one trend can be identified — the most competitive Asian economies are
Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand.
The Philippines is among the least competitive in the
region, which is not good for us.
I have three wish lists on this matter.
One, the prioritization and signing into law of RA 11032
is among the very few measures of the Duterte administration that I support. I
wish that he will do more ease of doing business policies, not the ease of
closing businesses such as when he moved to close Boracay for six months or the
ease by which the government over-taxed people via TRAIN.
Two, I wish there was a provision on the ease of closing
a business in RA 11032. Among the best incentives to attract investment is a
contestable market or free/easy entry, free/easy exit. If businesses see that
government will bureaucratize and harass them if they decide to close shop
someday, they will think twice about coming in.
Three, I wish there was another law mandating that work
in government (local and national, elected and appointed, continuous or on-off)
will only be a maximum 15 years, prompting officials and staff to go back to
the private sector.
Since many officials intend to become regulators and
bureaucrats until they retire, they tend to be more prohibitionist and
extortionist since their over-regulations and taxation of business will not
apply to them.
Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is President of Minimal
Government Thinkers, a member-institute of Economic Freedom Network (EFN) Asia.
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See also:
BWorld 220, Trade imbalances, protectionism and rhetoric, June 15, 2018
BWorld 221, Mindanao power development, reality vs illusion, June 16, 2018
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