Editorial:

Good

So what’s been said about committees that gives them such a bad reputation? For starters, a wag calls them “a group of the unfit appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.”

Then, of course, they’ve been defined as “a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.” But here’s one committee that we hope will not waste hours in endless debate but live up to its sole reason for being: to generate investments. 

We’re talking about the newly formed Investment Promotion Units (IPU) interagency network, with the Board of Investments as the lead agency, that aims to address investment-related issues and concerns raised by local and foreign investors.

The interagency network brings together 28 government entities, including the Department of Finance, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Commission on Information and Communications Technology, Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Economic Development Authority, among others.

The memorandum of agreement signed in April by these agencies stipulates that the IPU network will act on investment issues and concerns raised by investors within 72 hours from receipt of the complaint or not later than 15 working days.

The network will also expedite the approval of permits, licenses and other documents needed to put up investment projects as required by the concerned agencies.

Apart from this, the network will simplify procedures to facilitate the flow of investments from local and foreign sources, and adopt a system of coordination with the BOI actions taken on investors’ issues and concerns referred by the BOI One-Stop Action Center.

The strengthening of linkages and networking among government agencies concerned with generating both local and foreign investments is a step in the right direction, but we’d like to see more efforts on the part of different government agencies to get their acts together.

More local and foreign investments will generate jobs that will provide a way out of poverty for more and more Filipinos. Hand in hand with generating more investments must be earnest efforts to improve the business environment.

It cannot be denied that red tape from existing rules, regulations and procedures, including reporting requirements, causes undue delays in business expansion which can hinder the development of the economy as a whole. But we are glad that the IPU network will streamline efforts to generate additional investments that will spur economic growth. It’s about time, and we hope the committee will buckle down to work as soon as possible.

Bad 

The report that fewer OFWs were hired in the first half of this year spells bad news not only for the recruitment industry, but also for the government which relies on their remittances to keep the economy afloat.

The latest figures from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) show that from January to July 11, the total deployment reached only 564,320, or 7.1 percent less than the 607,639 number of Filipino workers who left the country to work abroad during the same period last year.

Based on the POEA data, the number of land-based workers decreased by 5.7 percent from 460,223 to 433,869 with the new hires posting a significant 21.4- percent drop. The number of sea-based workers, on the other hand, went down by 11.5 percent to 130,451 from last year’s total of 147,416. The figures also showed a 10-percent decrease, from 674,136 to 606,771, in contracts processed in the first six months of the year.

Why the drop in deployment? Recruitment industry leaders say we have a serious lack of highly skilled workers in the country at this time. POEA and the recruitment industry find it difficult to meet many job orders because we have a manpower shortage.

As a case in point, according to industry insiders, the demand for construction workers is expected to rise in the second half of the year. But the country may not be able to take advantage of this due to the prevailing shortage of engineers as well as construction workers. Why? Because the government, particularly the labor department and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, has failed to provide training programs that will considerably improve the skills of Filipino workers.

If what the recruitment industry is saying is true, then the concerned government agencies should waste no time and put up more training programs that will adequately respond to the actual needs of the labor force. If fewer OFWs are leaving because our schools and training centers are turning out graduates ill-prepared to meet the high skills and competence needed abroad, that can only mean one thing: the government’s insistent claim of robust economic growth will fall flat on its face, and that’s why it needs to take the appropriate remedial measures—and fast. 

So what’s been said about committees that gives them such a bad reputation? For starters, a wag calls them “a group of the unfit appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.”

‘Write something else,” said her friend. “Everyone knows your field is public governance. Must you continually write about it? Write about something else!”

For a stock-market investor, few things are as frustrating as being unable to get shares of a really hot IPO. Especially if everyone else you know was able to buy and you are the only one unable to participate in the IPO’s meteoric rise.

It has been an open secret that the national government is losing hundreds of million in taxes every year due to spurious claims against tax-credit certificates (TCCs) granted to oil companies in order to cushion the high cost of oil importations, and to protect oil companies and importers/exporters who use oil substantially in their manufacturing process.

Early this year, a rash of reports about the safety of Chinese products cropped up in a number of countries the most prominent being the “pet-food” scare in the United States and farm-raised seafood in Europe.

Science and technology are slowly moving up the political agenda in many developing countries. Politicians don’t want their countries to be left out of the global knowledge economy, and are realizing that science can contribute to virtually every field of public policy.