MEDIUM RARE

Like your dentist, the owner of the Hapee brand of toothpaste doesn’t want you to lose your teeth.

“What will happen to my business if everybody becomes toothless?” Dr. Cecilio K. Pedro joked over lunch. His brand has become so successful, he said in an aside, that his competitors have now and again asked him to supply them with a missing ingredient or two.

“Hapee new year of the Dragon!” he added.

As president of the gargantuan Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry – it covers 176 industries and chambers – the greeting may have been a bit late but it was still timely as far as the federation is concerned; it’s 70 years old this year, March being its birth month. Hapee 70th!

To celebrate, the federation will host starting this month a bevy of industrialists and businessmen from Asean plus China, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, who will tour our beautiful islands and note where they may want to invest their money. As Dr. Pedro puts it, FFCCCII has been “at the forefront of catalyzing foreign investments and promoting international trade, technical cooperation and partnerships.” Not to forget, its singular, decades-old “Buy local” slogan continues to resonate.

Likewise, its mission is to continue building schools – 6,200 so far — in rural communities. (I remember Frank Drilon, Senate president at the time, wondering how those schools cost so much less than ones built by government.) The federation president has his own private philanthropy, one geared toward training the hearing-impaired. “We look for teachers who can prepare them for jobs in the workplace, beginning with my companies,” he said.

As challenges local and global darken the skies, the rallying cry not only of the federation but of businessmen everywhere is to foster ease of doing business. The federation hopes the bane of red tape can give way to the convenience of digitalization and streamlining of LGU requirements. To cite one example, “40 signatures are required of an investor in the steel industry.”

While we talk of upskilling workers, we also dream of turning every jobless citizen into a productive laborer, professional, or entrepreneur. Under FFCCCII’s framework of chambers and industry groups from Aparri to Tawi-Tawi, that’s a lot of jobs to fill.