PGMA's Speech during the 27th National Conference of Employers

PGMA's Speech during the 27th National Conference of Employers

Centennial Ballroom, Manila Hotel (23 May 2006)

Thank you very much, Secretary Pat Sto. Tomas.

And may I take this opportunity to congratulate you and the employers and the laborers because now we have the lowest number of strikes in Philippine history. Congratulations!

Rene Soriano, president; Mike Varela, chairman; Francis Chua, thank you for your very kind statements; Donald; Cesar, congratulations on organizing this event. When we say "survive, compete, succeed," as Francis said, we've shown we can survive. Now we must compete and then succeed. Then we will be in the Enchanted Kingdom.

Other officials of the Philippine government. And may I just let you know that I asked CHED Chairman Carlito Puno to join me today because I saw that following the news about your meetings, I saw that you were going to recommend an advisory board in the colleges and universities. And at least Carlito has a strong say especially in the state universities and colleges. And we've got to do that before school opens because we don't want students again entering the wrong courses. We don't want to find out four years later that the course in which they enrolled will not find them a job even if there are so many jobs available in the jobs fair. So, I asked Carlito if he could join us today so that during or after this meeting, he can already sit down with ECOP to work out the business advisory groups in the state universities and colleges.

Officers and members of ECOP; participants in this conference of employers; honored guests; ladies and gentlemen.

Indeed, as Francis said and Rene chose and Mario as the theme of this convention, in this age of globalization and high technology, and in these days of oil price surges your response is logical: survive, compete with the rest of the world, and succeed.

The polls recently conducted by the Bangko Sentral showing that economies are expecting better times along with the favorable economic indicators mentioned by Francis. For instance for April, the double digit increase in foreign portfolio investment over the previous month are all-time high of 21 billion dollars in foreign reserves. Our nine-year record budget surplus of 17 billion as well as the favorable report from Calpers and the Bank of America this may should project the country's economic resiliency amidst the continuing threat of spiraling world oil prices. Survive -- that's what we've been able to do.

Philippine employers of course play an important role in making all this happen. Now to compete and succeed there is nothing like a strong government-private sector partnership bolstered by tough decisions and robust market-driven policies to empower the economy to survive, compete and succeed.

In the last meeting of the export development council that I called and chaired, I had it held in Amkor Techologies because I wanted to congratulate the export sector for your 27 percent increase in exports for the first quarter. And especially the electronics companies because you make up two-thirds of our exports. During that export development council meeting, the subject matter that I put in the agenda was competitiveness and exactly it fits with our theme. We've shown we can survive; now we have to succeed before we enter the enchanted kingdom.

To compete. One of the things I learned in my trip to Saudi Arabia where Donald, Mike were with me and Francis -- Rene, you weren't with me, 'no? -- was that many years ago Saudi Arabia, and they produce oil already, but many years ago they looked at the different parameters and variables for competitiveness and they tested themselves and they worked on each one of them, until now they have succeeded in becoming the tenth most competitive economy in the world.

We did the same exercise now with the export development council. We looked at the various indicators of competitiveness and how we ranked in judgments of the analysts. We're not doing that bad in government efficiency especially because we've achieved the budget debt surplus, the reduction of the budget deficit, the customs, the revenues being overshot, the tax reforms. But two areas that the exporters and the government identified together with the labor representatives are on the part of business, your business efficiency; and on the part of government, our infrastructure. Those are the areas in which we need to catch up. For infrastructure, it is only now that we can start catching up because it is only now that we have the revenues to finance all the infrastructure that you need for competitiveness.

You are witness to the north expressway, the south expressway now being constructed, the Clark airport, the Subic port being constructed, the Batangas port now operating for many of the Calabarzon firms, the Lipa airport will soon have night lights, so that the electronics firms in Calabarzon can ship out of there and so on and so forth.

We've also agreed that the most important infrastructure now we will concentrate on because our roads and airport projects are underway is the power infrastructure to make power competitive in our country.

Aside from infrastructure your main partner -- and I'm speaking to the employers -- your main partner in government is the Department of Labor. And I started by congratulating Pat but I'd like to tell you more about the Department of Labor and what they're doing. The DOLE is a professional organization of 7,000 people. It has a budget of 4.5 billion pesos, of the 4.5, 2.5 goes to TESDA and I have asked TESDA to allocate 500 million pesos for scholarships in call centers because that is where the largest single job opportunities are located.

We have good and competent people in their senior positions so that even with the limited budget -- I mean, 4.5 compared to over a hundred billion for Department of Education, 60 billion for Public Works, 60 billion for defense -- 4.5 billion, yet they're able to give you the employers a good measure of support.

I want to congratulate therefore -- and I ask you to help me congratulate the DOLE -- but I want also to congratulate the employers and your partners in the labor sector because as I said strikes are now at an all-time low but not only that because of the way that our workers have shown themselves to be so competitive and world class. We have well-paying overseas employment also at an all-time high and unemployment is at single digit levels.

I reiterate the support I expressed on labor day for a reasonable wage hike hammered out by the tripartite regional wage boards in such a way that there will be no surprises insofar as business costs are concerned. We are also pushing conciliation and mediation as an alternative to arbitration.

Pat tells me that DOLE has signed a memorandum of agreement with the Archdiocese of Manila so that for Catholics schools and hospitals among others they will attempt to settle labor disputes first before cases are filed. This will lessen the number of disputes going to arbitration. It will help clean our case dockets. It will minimize the hardening of labor management conflicts. And I hope and I would like to propose in this ECOP conference that we do similar agreements between DOLE and ECOP and also with the local government units. Our goal is to have zero reason to have strikes by the end of my term in 2010.

There are new markets for overseas employment with legal frameworks that are similar or familiar to our workers in the Philippines. Spain's labor market -- this is what we are trying to negotiate, for when I go to Spain the end of June -- Spain's labor market will hopefully open for 100,000 of our workers in the next two years. But I also hope to be able to get Spain's tourism investors to the Philippines to give jobs in tourism which is highly labor and skills intensive.

Canada's provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan are seeking labor agreements with the Philippines and that may possibly include temporary migration with an option for permanent settlement. Alberta's oilfields are said to be at least as big as Saudi Arabia. Wow! That's mind boggling because Saudi Aramco who was our host on the last day of our trip to Saudi Arabia has one-fourth of the world's reserves and ten percent of the world's production of oil. And if they say that Canada has about the same amount, that's a very very big source of opportunity again for our overseas skilled Filipino workers.

In Saudi Arabia, we have 1.2 million Filipinos, of which more than a million are managers and highly technical workers. Eighty nine thousand (89,000) are domestic workers, a very very small percentage, and we concentrate our protection efforts on them because the managers and the technical workers are naturally protected by the market. In eastern Saudi Arabia where oil is the economy, there are 400,000 Filipinos. Imagine if indeed it's true that Canada has the same reserves as Saudi Arabia, that means another job opportunity for 400,000 Filipinos. Not because they are jobless here, because we want to create jobs here as well, but because the Filipinos are great Filipino workers and they can help us with their skills to achieve energy independence for our country and the whole world.

Canada expects to start exploring -- just exploring, because they're still reserves -- those fields and they want Filipino labor because Filipino workers are the greatest workers in the world. And we hope that we will benefit by the ensuing boom in economic activity because wherever Filipinos go, they are still Filipinos. They care for their families, they care for our country, and they build up our housing industry and so many other industries in our country.

Australia is in a similar mode. Secretary Pat Sto. Tomas opened a skills expo with their authorities just the other day. Taiwan has just doubled our quota. And speaking of skills, we've been having skills expo, we've been having a lot of job fairs. But in the job fairs, we have many job fairs with 70,000 jobs available, sometimes we have only 18,000 applicants, sometimes only 5,000 are hired or 1,000. Not because of the lack of jobs, because there are more jobs being offered than applicants, but because of what you have shown me in your report-- the lack of matching between the demand and the supply for labor.

That's the reason for the 500 million pesos for call center scholarships. That's the reason for the business advisory board for the state universities and colleges to start with. And I hope also today Carlito, please meet with chairman of TESDA Boboy Syjuco today so that you can work out the ladderized system of instruction when the people take up technical courses their courses will be credited for a college education.

We are now in sync with the rest of the world insofar as the definition of employment and unemployment is concerned. We use to suffer by comparison partly because of the stringent parameters we impose on ourselves outside of the international definition.

In the rest of the world, when the survey comes and they ask you, 'if a job is offered to you today, will you be available?" These are for the people who are not working. If their answer is 'no,' in other countries, they are not part of the labor force. In our country prior to our adjustment, they are part of the labor force, they are part of the unemployed, so therefore we tend to have a bigger unemployment percentage than would appear than would really be using international standards. But even by changing the new definition, we did not decrease unemployment only by changing the definition. Even with the new definition, we have in fact improved on the employment situation due to our pump priming interventions.

One of the beneficiaries of our pump priming interventions has been agriculture. In the past, we would be happy if agriculture will grow at three percent. In the first quarter, agriculture grew at five percent. And this is one of the reasons why Bank of America and others have upgraded their forecast for GDP growth in our country.

Facilitation assistance has also made our job creation efforts more visible among the job seekers with the trade fairs that I was telling you about. We continue with the trade fairs. I asked Pat together with Artee Yap, who is my Presidential Management Staff head, to keep having trade fairs this summer for the recent graduates. Next month however when the students go back to school, we will open a jobs fair for soldiers and officers wounded in battle to express our support for them for serving our country faithfully and well. This will be the first of a series for persons with disabilities that I committed during the persons with disability's week that we celebrated a few weeks ago.

We are trying to cover the informal sector with social security because more than those who are in your factories and offices they are vulnerable to all kinds of occupational risks. We have covered almost 22,000 but the campaign continues as a poverty alleviation measure. In our country, the majority of the workers are not salaried employees, the majority are self-employed and family workers. Workers in the informal sector, and we have to give them the benefits of social security.

There are many other things we're trying to do, and I thank you for your recommendations here. I was just glancing over your resolutions about what employers can do together through ECOP. And I'm very glad that your working on what to do together, because as I said in the competitiveness survey, there are some low points on business efficiency. And Rene told me that you're working with the ILO in order to improve on internal business efficiency. Improving the match between demands for jobs and supply of skills -- in fact, we've seen that in the trade fairs. That's why Carlito is important, Boboy is important, and you are important -- what the employers can do together with government. And for countries who benefit from our human capital, we also work with them. And I'm very glad that you have very very specific missions to carry out your part of our determination to compete.

We are trying to carry out our pro-poor policies as well as to create more investments and jobs through a more business-friendly operating environment. And if we work on all of this together, in fact, that will be a more business-friendly environment and a more competitive business sector. Because in the end, it is you who will meet our target of at least a million jobs a year. It is you the employers who will create six to ten million jobs between 2004 and 2010. And that's why I congratulate you and I laud you and I applaud you in this hall. You are exemplars of the will and capacity to survive, to compete, and to succeed.

Let's stay together. Let's dream together. And what do I mean by being in the enchanted kingdom, we can operationalize that. Let's be among the countries of the first world in 20 years.

Mabuhay ang ating mga employer!

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