The National Competitiveness Council (NCC) is intensifying efforts in pushing for the implementation of special projects meant to help establish the country brand and key strategies to improve Philippine competitiveness.

Guillermo Luz, private sector co-chairman of the NCC, in a forum, identified some of these special projects as the country tourism brand, renovation of airports and upgrade of Roxas Boulevard-to-Intramuros stretch.

Luz said there is a need to create a new and unified country brand and campaign covering advertising, public relations, events, social marketing and new media for both international and domestic audiences.

To boost the tourism industry, he said renovation of airports should be a priority project.

“There is an urgent need to fix both NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) and Mactan, renovating and modernizing the interiors and improving airport processes to make travel a more pleasant experience. Other airport projects can follow,” he noted.

Luz pointed out that airports are the most visible “destination” for travelers which can leave a lasting impression at both arrival and departure stages of a trip.                 

He said Roxas Boulevard, Luneta Park and Intramuros should be restored to its former glory. The area remains one of the most visited tourist destinations in Manila, and is considered iconic, signature visitor sites.

Apart from project implementation, Luz said they are gearing up their efforts towards undertaking industry and country strategies to build up long-term competitiveness of the Philippines.

There is a need to prepare five to 10-year industry roadmaps. He cited for example that of the business process outsourcing (BPO) and tourism sectors.

Roadmaps should describe the state of industry today, other country competitors, potential of industry for value and employment growth, projected investments by industry players and policy environment required by industry.

He added country strategy entails benchmarking against key competitiveness indices, tracking city competitiveness and key indicators, focusing on lowest-ranking or easiest-to-fix indicators and linking competitiveness plan to Philippine Development Plan, national budget, Cabinet agenda and Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC).

Moreover, Luz said the NCC, a public-private sector partnership, has Working Groups focusing on specific projects expected to improve the country’s competitiveness.

These are education and competitive human resources, balanced scorecard system, infrastructure for competitiveness, transaction costs and flows, import and export clearance/Bureau of Custom’s National Single Window, energy costs and availability, and transparency in budget delivery.

The Council aims to address the improvement of the country’s competitiveness from the bottom third of competitiveness rankings to the top third by 2016.

The Philippine competitiveness ranking dropped by two notches to 41st among 59 countries covered by the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) 2011 recently released by Swiss-based International Institute for Management and Development.

As the country implements these strategies and projects, Luz said it hopes to achieve a higher foreign direct investments, double export growth to $120 billion by 2016 with new products and services to account for 30 percent of exports, and gross domestic product (GDP) growth of seven to eight percent per year.

For its part, the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) is pushing a number of key actions, including pursuing infrastructure strategic to the so-called Big Winners, intended to enhance the country’s competitiveness.

MAP Task Force for Competitiveness chair Ambassador Cesar B. Bautista said products and services where the country generate greatest potentials for growth include agribusiness, tourism, information technology (IT)-enabled services, electronics, logistics-enabled products, manufacturing, mining; and health, wellness and retirement.

“There should be appropriate infrastructure and policies to ensure effective linkages from investors’ sources of assets/resources to the processing centers to the distribution centers to domestic/overseas markets,” he said. “Some policies may require legislation but many only need executive actions.”

Bautista said the Task Force would also push for the creation of a Strong Investors Assistance Office and a Coalition for Competitiveness (CFC) which will be a private sector initiative, similar to the business model of Coalition Against Corruption.

By Danielle Venz, PHILEXPORT News and Features