HOW NOT TO SELL A PRODUCT NO ONE WANTS TO BUY: THE CASE OF PH

 

The Product              : Philippines

The Customers         : Foreign Investors

The Salesman          : President Bongbong Marcos (PBBM)

The Issue                  : “Marcos travel expenses: P403M” (Manila Times headline)

According to the Commission on Audit, the Office of the President’s travel expenses for foreign trips increased by around 1,453 % in 2022. “Significant increase of P367 million is due to the official travels relative to the foreign summits and state visit attended by the president during the year in Singapore, Indonesia, United States of America, Cambodia, Thailand, and Belgium,” state auditors said.

PBBM has justified the foreign travels by telling critics to focus on the supposed return on investment. He said:

“Kapag hindi tayo bumiyahe at nagpakita sa mga conference na yan, hindi nila tayo iniisip. Wala sa isipan nila ang Pilipinas. Kailangan natin ipakita kung ano ang atin para mapaganda ang potential investments nila sa dadalhin nila dito sa Pilipinas."

Is he justified?

The key to the answer we will find in the title itself of this Entrepreneur article by Sujan Patel: Are you Selling Something Nobody Wants to Buy? In the case of PBBM, the salesman, selling the Philippines, the product, we may rephrase the question: Is PBBM selling the Philippines no investor wants to invest in?  The author breaks down further the question into this one: “Do people want what you’re selling?”

In PBBM case: Do the investors want to invest in the Philippines?

COLD HARD FACTS

We will come up with the answer in the following cold hard facts.

1.    Ease of Doing Business. The Philippines is furthest behind the top ASEAN countries in ranking in the World Bank metric of Ease of Doing Business. As shown in Table 1 below, the ranking is based on the 10 vital factors ranging from the investors’ starting their business, getting credit, up to resolving their insolvency in a crisis.

2.    Corruption. The Philippines is the most corrupt country among the top ASEAN countries based on the 2022 Corruption International index by Transparency International as shown in Table 2.

3.  Foreign Investment. The Philippines is at the back of the queue insofar as the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment is concerned. The numbers in Table 3 are not starry-eyed “aspirations,” er, pledges that the PBBM administration cited in justifying the President’s foreign trips for having earned the country $23.6 billion.

 Table 1. Top ASEAN Countries Ranking in Ease of Doing Business

	Singapore	Malaysia	Thailand	Vietnam	Indonesia	Philippines
World Ranking	2	12	21	70	73	95
Starting business	4	126	47	115	140	171
Dealing w/ Const’n permits	5	2	34	25	110	85
Getting Electricity	19	4	6	27	33	32
Registering property	21	33	67	64	106	120
Getting credit	37	37	48	25	48	132
Protecting minority Investors	3	2	3	97	37	72
Paying taxes	7	80	68	109	81	95
Trading across borders	47	49	62	104	116	113
Enforcing contracts	1	35	37	68	139	152
Resolving Insolvency	27	40	24	122	38	65

The World Bank ranked economies on their ease of doing business among 190 countries benchmarked to May 2019. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm.

 Table 2. Corruption Perception Index (Transparency International, 2022)

	Singapore	Malaysia	Vietnam	Thailand	Indonesia	Philippines
World Ranking	5	61	77	101	110	116

Note: Lower Rank Less Corrupt

Table 3. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), 2022, in US$ millions (ASEAN Stats Data Portal)

	Singapore	Indonesia	Vietnam	Malaysia	Thailand	Philippines
FDI	141,187.20	21,968.20	17,899.90	17,095.80	9,939.60	9,199.90

 

NOBODY WANTS TO BUY

Let’s go back to the questions:

Do the investors want to invest in the Philippines? Our discussion backed up by the tables has shown that no investor in his right mind will invest in the Philippines with such relatively rock-bottom figures against the top ASEAN countries.

Is PBBM selling the Philippines no investor wants to invest in? Yes, as shown in the tables.

Is he justified? That is, “kailangan natin ipakita kung ano ang atin para mapaganda ang potential investments nila sa dadalhin nila dito sa Pilipinas.” I don’t think so. Going back to the article’s title, this cold hard truth of the question, PBBM must be asked: “Are you Selling Something Nobody Wants to Buy?” We have answered that question. Yes. And therefore, his colossal travel expenses are unjustified.

Let’s look into some justifications by his minions:

Here’s one. The increase in the expenses on foreign trips of PBBM was due to a “huge volume of invitations for international events, conferences, high-level meetings, and state visits, among others, and the OP has acceded to some of these requests, knowing that the country and the public, in general, will benefit immensely from the President’s participation in these engagements.”

Not having said a word about investment, this line reminds me of my corporate heyday, particularly during those annual performance report presentations to the top management. In a typical piece of a presentation paper, one would see a column with the heading -- “variances” – the figures represent the expenses incurred over (mostly, rather than under) the budget. Staff, like me, would craft justifications for each “variance.” This question puts the finishing touches on the report: “What’s the justification in the previous report?” to double-check that it would not appear a carbon copy -- a "copy paste" today.

SHADOW

Here’s another one in a headline. “Marcos foreign trips ‘out of his control,’ says chief legal counsel.” (Manila Times)

It reminds me of psychiatrist Carl Jung’s “Shadow” – the part of our mind containing those things that we would rather not own up to, that we are continually trying to hide from ourselves and others. We sweep such a "shadow" under the rug of our consciousness, even to the extent of our being pushed up against the wall by evidence of our unethical behavior.

One movie title, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, fleshes out much darker the “Shadow” which describes someone who has done something bad or evil. When he says, “The devil made me do it,” it implies that the person had acted OUT OF HIS CONTROL and that he or she was forced to do something against his or her will. Believed to have originated in the medieval era, the phrase is usually used as an excuse for someone’s bad behavior.

Instead of wrangling with the centenarian’s legal mind, let me wrap up this article with this flash from the past.

During my corporate heyday, now and then, a top corporate biggie would suddenly pop up and drop in on his company’s underlings’ workplace. At times, he would catch one of us off-balance with this gotcha “Where did this figure come from?” question, while looking intently at the blueprint sprawled on the drawing board.

As engineers, we would always wish for him to vanish instantly from our sight. So, for our biggie who is usually, not an engineer, we always had an on-the-spot ready-stopper answer: “It's the standard specification, Sir.”

Head collage photos courtesy of ABS-CBN News, Philippine Star, & Land Bank of the Philippines

Video clips courtesy of YouTube