By Aira C. Igharas | Special to the BusinessMirror
THE Asian Institute of Management Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Competitiveness (AIM RSN PCC), in partnership with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Philippines, recently held a conference to uphold public awareness and engage stakeholders on the importance of shared prosperity. The session, held on August 24 in Makati City, was attended by over 200 participants from academe, international organizations, government agencies, business sector, civil society and the media.
With the theme “Towards a Shared Prosperity: Building Synergies in Competitiveness and Development,” the conference aims to emphasize the importance of shared prosperity and promote national competitiveness. The Philippines’s economy is considered robust. However, the statistical prosperity is still not felt by around 25 percent of Filipinos who remain poor, according to The State of Shared Prosperity in the Philippines review.
“To sustain the developments that have boosted macroeconomic indicators and generated optimistic expectations about the economy, growth must be shared across all sectors. At present, the benefits of recent economic successes are yet to be broadly felt, especially among the poor and disenfranchised in society,” AIM RSN PCC Executive Director Prof. Jamil Paolo S. Francisco said. “We need to move toward shared prosperity to ensure that more Filipinos benefit from the economic gains that we currently enjoy.”
Shared prosperity, according to AIM RSN PCC, is sustainable national economic growth that accelerates household income growth, enhances quality of life and provides development opportunities not only for the country’s elite and professional classes, but also for vulnerable low-income and marginalized groups.
“Prosperity must be shared for prosperity to be gainful,” Francisco added. Citing examples of shared prosperity, CEO Joji Felicitas B. Pantoja of Coffee for Peace Inc., a social enterprise focused on improving the lives of coffee farmers and advocating for peace, shared her experiences in leading the coffee shop.
“Lasting peace is the common goal,” she said. Pantoja founded the enterprise, promoting peace and unity, on April 15, 2008, in Davao City. According to Coffee for Peace, the idea began when the founders facilitated an informal conflict mediation in Maguindanao province between a migrant farmer and a Bangsamoro neighbor. The two were trying to kill each other for the ownership of the rice field ready for harvest, regardless of who planted the rice or who owned the land. Instead of shooting each other, the two were invited for a dialogue over coffee. Since then, they started inviting other members of the community to have coffee together—for peace.
Ma. Gisela Tiongson, executive director of the Jollibee Group Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Jollibee Foods Corp., contributes to shared prosperity by allotting 1.5 percent of the company’s income the prior year to farmers. The foundation gives livelihood through agriculture under its farmer-entrepreneurship program.
In a lecture on “Promoting Shared Prosperity for Competitiveness,” National Competitiveness Council Cochairman Guillermo M. Luz said, “We are competing for investments, trade, service exports, tourists, image or brand, and Filipinos opt to work abroad.”
He said competitiveness should be “spread out all over the place, not only in big cities.”
Relating the successful efforts of Malaysia in shared prosperity, Performance and Management Delivery Unit Director Fabian Bigar said the national transformation journey of Malaysia was focused on evaluating the Cabinet’s output consistently and making sure of a stable high income, sustainability and inclusiveness.
Mayor John G. Bongat of Naga City discussed the secrets of leading Naga as the Most Competitive Component City in the Philippines for 2015 and 2016 by the United States Agency for International Development and the World Bank. KAS Philippines Country Director Benedikt Seeman ended the conference saying, “The secret for competitiveness is transparency.”