#MINDANAO
John Tria
Competitiveness is a dynamic continuous process. As is true for businesses and farms, it starts with an ability to lower costs and achieve better margins versus that of competitors. For the farm it means new growing techniques to address not only the requirements of new customers that continually demand better quality and reasonable (read: lower) prices, but the challenges of a changing climate, which can wreak havoc on growing patters as I have been writing about previously.
But beyond lowering costs, competititveness means understanding how well you can compete in a changing environment, which includes your traditional and upcoming competitors. They too, want to change to achieve their competititive advantage and understanding the operating environment and how it affects their competititveness. This means leveraging on your skills, and adding and sharpening them.
On the other hand, being uncompetitive means a chronic inability to manage or reduce costs, and learn new skills and adapt, and sell and distribute more cheaply and effectively. Worse, it is expecting others to achieve that for them- even asking others to protect them from competitors-forcing their customers and consumers to pay higher prices. Do you know of any friends, businesses and industries who behave this way?
Perhaps it would be wise to learn history to see how such enterprises have degenerated to such an uncompetitive state, while their competitors thrive in a challenging environment. Why they can produce more cheaply or distribute more effectively. These are some important aspects of historical teaching we should explore, but I digress.
It is important to look at enterprise and industry level competitiveness because a competitive economy is measured by government policies that promote competition, but also on the competitiveness of the private firms that make up the economy- how innovative these are in providing a wide array goods and services that beat their competitors. When investors and consumers benefit from choice, investing in an economy is easier since the goods and services you need are available, and affordable.
What needs to be done? I agree with fellow MB columnist Monchito Ibrahim. We need to transition into a knowledge economy. This is because such an economy brings out the best of our resourcefulness and ability to use old and new knowledge including history and future trends, an essential means to face new challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. In his latest column (https://mb.com.ph/2022/04/19/21st-century-skills-and-philippine-competitiveness/?fbclid=IwAR1agC-W32Cr5X8DT5y5gD6wDHAcn1fwTpf9pcl8VNilS0z_YFsYGIwgVHY) he wrote about the Singapore Skills Framework engaged by the DTI and TESDA. This I believe is a program that schools and businesses will need to examine.
A flurry of business events in Mindanao
On April 26, an official business mission composed of government and private sector companies headed by Republic of Korea (ROK) Ambassador Kim In-chul will visit Davao City next week to expand business ties. The delegation will gather for a one-day event dubbed as ROK-Mindanao Sectoral Discussions and Business to Business Meeting on April 26, 2022 at the city’s Acacia Hotel. One of the objectives is the establishment of a business network and partnerships between Mindanao and Korea’s private sector.
Another online event worth attending is the CREATE in Agriculture hosted by the agribusiness committee of the American Chamber of Commerce on April 26, 2022 from 2:45 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., which will spur investments in agribusiness. Likewise interesting is the upcoming general membership meeting of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and industry about the Davao region outlook for 2022 with special guest Mindanao Development Authority Secretary Maria Belen Sunga Acosta as guest. Visit the Davao Chamber FB page for more details.