Anyone who has tried to build a business in the Philippines knows the feeling.

You have decided to invest. The capital is ready. The market is there. You know exactly what needs to be built. And yet, between deciding to act and actually doing so, you face an endless queue of permits, clearances, redundant requirements, fees, and signatures.

As someone whose business builds infrastructure, I know this frustration firsthand. Often, the technology isn't the hardest problem, nor is raising the capital. The hardest part is simply getting permission to build.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Normally, we accept this friction as the cost of doing business. We adjust timelines, navigate the bureaucracy, and move on. Filipinos excel at that. We find a way—we make a call, bring another document, come back tomorrow.

We call it diskarte.

But recent economic numbers suggest we can no longer afford to treat this friction as normal.

The Philippine economy grew by only 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026. More troubling is what happened beneath that headline number: Gross capital formation fell 9.2 percent, total construction declined 14.8 percent, and government construction plummeted 32.4 percent.

Those numbers matter because economies grow when people build.

We build roads, bridges, factories, power plants, fiber networks, and data centers. Entrepreneurs open restaurants, shops, and offices. Companies buy equipment, expand facilities, and hire workers. Much of that momentum begins with a single decision: I am willing to put my money here.

Right now, the government itself is building less. Part of this slowdown stems from agencies reviewing infrastructure projects following high-profile corruption allegations.

That scrutiny is necessary. Public funds meant for roads, bridges, and flood control must not vanish into corruption, and those responsible must be held accountable. But corruption extracts a double price: first, we lose the money that was stolen; second, we lose the infrastructure that money should have built. Then, as government responds with investigations and caution, legitimate projects stall.

That makes private investment even more vital.

If the government cannot deploy capital while cleaning up the system, the private sector must carry more of the load. We need businesses building factories, power grids, transmission lines, housing, telecommunications, warehouses, data centers, and thousands of smaller enterprises nationwide.

There are encouraging signs. Approved foreign investments reached ₱115.2 billion in the second quarter—up 68.2 percent year-over-year. Capital is willing to enter the market. The question is how difficult we make it to deploy.

Government investment materials acknowledge non-standardized LGU permitting, delays, right-of-way disputes, and extra regulatory fees as major barriers to broadband deployment. Reports persist of local governments inventing new requirements and fees for routine permits.

We shouldn't paint every LGU with the same brush. I have worked with local officials who understand that when businesses invest, communities thrive; they help solve problems rather than create them. But where unnecessary requirements, unpredictable fees, and excessive delays exist, we must call them what they are: barriers to growth.

This is not a call to dismantle standards.

We need building codes, environmental safeguards, labor protections, and accountability. Responsible businesses benefit from sound regulation because it protects both communities and investors. But every requirement must serve a clear purpose.

If we ask businesses to spend time and money complying with a rule, we should be able to articulate the public interest it protects. If two agencies require the same information, they should talk to each other instead of asking the investor to submit it twice. If a permit can be processed digitally, no one should have to spend a day hopping from window to window.

These may sound like minor inconveniences, but aggregated across an economy, they are severe.

Somewhere today, someone wants to build. Perhaps a local entrepreneur opening a restaurant, a manufacturer expanding a production line, a renewable-energy developer, a telecom firm laying fiber, or a foreign investor deciding whether to commit a hundred million pesos here or elsewhere.

Every unnecessary month of delay has a cost. Every redundant permit has a cost. Every arbitrary fee has a cost. Multiply those costs across thousands of enterprises, and they eventually drag down national growth.

How much Philippine growth is sitting on someone’s desk right now, waiting for a signature?

We often discuss the "ease of doing business" as if it were merely about global competitiveness rankings or attracting foreign capital. It is much more fundamental than that. Growth simply happens when people are empowered to get things done.

Filipino entrepreneurs have become remarkably adept at overcoming obstacles. We improvise, follow up, return to the office, bring another photocopy, and somehow get the project built. There is something admirable about that resilience.

But resilience must not become an excuse for dysfunctional systems.

At 2.3 percent growth, we do not have the luxury of making productive investment difficult. If public infrastructure spending must slow while restoring integrity to the system, we should do everything reasonable to help private capital move faster.

Every peso someone is willing to invest productively should be treated as an opportunity to build a business, create a job, connect a community, and strengthen our economy—not as an excuse to demand another document, collect another fee, or direct someone to another line.

Doing business will never be effortless. Risk, competition, and uncertainty are inherent to entrepreneurship, and government cannot—and should not—remove those challenges.

It should simply ensure it isn't adding unnecessary ones. We need people willing to build. We should make it easier for them to do so.