HERE’S something the government can go to town with, with the band: In a recent Best Countries rankings, the Philippines is the third best country in the world when it comes to starting a business! The exclamation point is there to tell all nations below us—including the mighty United States, Canada, Australia, China, India, and even rich neighbor Singapore—that we can be ahead of the pack…that we know how to make things work out right…if we try (apologies to Don McLean).
The BusinessMirror is sharing this news because it makes us happy for the country to know that sometimes our government does its job right. More than 4,000 business decision-makers from all over the world rated the Philippines as the third best country—behind Thailand and Malaysia—to put up a business. The survey, which rated 60 countries on the different aspects of doing business, was initiated by US News & World Report, a multiplatform publisher of news and information, in partnership with BAV Consulting and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
The survey adopted five equally weighted attributes that contribute to the ranking: affordability, bureaucracy, cheap manufacturing costs, connection to the rest of the world and provision to easy access to capital. According to the US News post, it takes about 29 days and costs 16.1 percent of the average income per capita to start a business in the Philippines. This information was taken from the World Bank.
It added: Entrepreneurs need to undergo 16 independent procedures to connect with at least seven different agencies in the country to put up a business of their own. However, about 25 percent of the 320,000 business name registrations in 2015 were conducted online. This factor helped the country to rank higher in terms of starting a business.
Unfortunately, the Philippines did not fare so well in the other aspects of the survey. We were No. 18 in “Best countries to invest in”; 25th in “Best countries to travel alone”; 24th in “Best countries for a comfortable retirement”; 31st in “Most forward-looking countries”; 33rd in “Best countries to headquarter a corporation”; 40th in “Best countries for education”; 33rd in “Best countries for raising kids”; 33rd in “Best countries to study abroad”; 41st in “Best countries for women”; 44th in “Most influential countries”; 36th in “Best countries for green living”; and 47th in “Most transparent countries”.
In the other categories, here’s how the Philippines scored: 27th in “Quality of life”; 50th in “Power”; 16th in “Open for business”; 23rd in “Movers”; 40th in “Heritage”; 33rd in “Entrepreneurship”; 38th in “Cultural influence”; 38th in “Citizenship”; and 17th in “Adventure”. In conducting the survey, the US News and World Report said “globalization has expanded a country’s presence beyond its physical borders, and the 2016 Best Countries rankings seek to understand a nation’s worth beyond hard metrics.”
Clearly, the Best Countries inaugural report showed the potential for the Philippines to drive global trade and investments. We can use a small advantage in the area of starting a business to attract investments. The Philippines is ideally positioned to advance in the age of Asean integration. The government must continue to adopt policies that create economic possibilities.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano