INTEKAKSYON, the online news portal of TV5, reported yesterday morning that the Philippine Stock Exchange index broke the heretofore unchartered 7,000 level just minutes after trading opened. Rappler said this is reflective of investors’ confidence in the country’s economy, which already profited from credit upgrade to investor’s status by Fitch and which could further profit from a similar upgrade by Standard & Poors anytime.
Since I am not an economist, I listen to what they (the economists) say and I get a rosy picture. But why aren’t all Filipinos happy? I hear the same grumbling that I heard when we got the Fitch upgrade.
“You may have a stock exchange that’s playing quite impressively,” an online reader said snootily yesterday. “Yet, there are millions of Filipinos who do not have a roof over their heads, who do not have a sufficient supply of food and resources and jobs that would not only keep them busy and keep them away from crimes but also bring in more money.”
It seems that many of us labor under the belief that once we get a credit rating upgrade and our investment houses behave bullishly, life becomes automatically easy for all of us so that all that we need to do is sit and relax. Or is it just that some people simply love to complain?
Compare their behavior with that of James Lafferty, an American who once headed the Philippine operations of the multinational Procter & Gamble. Now working as an executive for the second largest tobacco company in the world, he wrote last month in his blog (I am omitting the quotation marks but all the words are his):
I think many people are shocked at how bullish I am on the Philippines. And I am not saying there is nothing to improve upon. It is just that, from my vantage point of leading multinationals in that country, the nation is incredibly competitive! Let me tell a few stories to explain why.
I have worked for some of the biggest and most respected consumer goods companies: Procter and Gamble, Coca-Cola. And now BAT. And on five continents and over 40 countries.
In every country there are indeed competitors-–some local, but typically the ones concerned being other multinationals. Like when I was at Coke, my biggest worry was Pepsi most of the time, not the local cola brand.
There is, however, one nation that stands out. Where the local companies are so good and so well-run that they represent the big competitive risk. And that country is the Philippines.
P&G is the biggest laundry detergent company in the world. And in normal cases, the key competitors are companies like Unilever or Henkel. But not in the Philippines. In my time leading P&G, the leader of the laundry detergent bar segment, which was nearly half the market, was a great brand called Champion from Peerless. A local company. Well run. A very formidable competitor. They were winning market shares. And they deserved it, doing a better job of delivering real consumer value. I respected them.
You can see the same in many, if not most consumer categories. Diapers have EQ, a brilliant local brand. Toothpaste has Hapee. And there are many more: Splash Corporation, Below Skincare, Alaska Milk-–all Filipino companies that are well-run, hyper-competitive and winning market shares.
(Lafferty ended his blog with the observation that the current administration is pushing “all the right buttons” to get investment grade rating and that when that happens, “it’s going to be downright exciting-–and scary to some.” He wrote that before the Fitch upgrade).
(frank.otherside@yahoo.com)