Saturday, March 31, 2007 SMEs urged to be competitive
THE Philippine Quality Award Foundation Inc. (PQA) is encouraging small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Cebu to raise each other’s competence to world-class level.
“PQA is bringing it down to the level of the SMEs because we need to create a bigger base of competitive, cost-effective companies. Otherwise, we will be flooded with products coming from China,” said PQA president emeritus Filemon Berba Jr.
Patterned after the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award given in the United States annually, PQA is a global competitiveness template for private and public organizations in the country, which can also be used as a self-assessment tool.
It was established through Executive Order 448 in 1997.
“Most of the awardees are currently big corporations, but for large companies, it’s hard to develop vertically and so their contractors and suppliers need to be highly competitive,” he said.
Business leaders have long stressed the importance of competitiveness to draw foreign direct investments and for local companies to penetrate the global market.
Booming
Berba said Cebu’s booming economic community is a good venue to develop competitiveness.
“It’s small, self-contained and people are industrious. Cebu is not agri-based,” he said, seeing a strong potential in the local food industry.
In terms of services, Berba also said Cebu and the country, in general, needs to fully utilize its pool of competent information technology professionals to prevent the continued problem on brain drain or the exodus of Filipinos to work abroad.
“Export the product of the talent, rather than the talent himself. Filipinos are innovative and creative, but the opportunity to create is not yet developed,” he said.
Berba added that raising the need for competitiveness even in the SME level will be the country’s niche among its competitors.
No nominees
However, while Cebu boasts of numerous competent companies, not one company in the province has been nominated for the PQA, Berba told Sun.Star Cebu during the PQA roadshow “Symposium on the pro-active programs for competitiveness” held last Thursday at the Crown Regency Suites in Lapu-Lapu City.
Earlier he said the John B. Lacson Colleges Foundation-Arevalo Inc. in Iloilo is the first awardee in the Visayas. The institution gained recognition last year for its commitment to quality management.
For companies who intend to apply for the PQA, an application fee of P20,000 is charged for large scale enterprises, and P5,000 for small and medium enterprises and the public sector.
PQA has set four criteria namely, leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, and measurement analysis and knowledge management.
Candidates will be “scrutinized” by a group of assessors based on the criteria. The group’s findings will then be forwarded to the board for the appropriate award.
The winners will receive the PQA for performance excellence, which is considered the top award, mastery in quality management, proficiency in quality management and commitment to quality management.
Infrastructure
Berba said most of the awardees are multinational companies engaged in the manufacturing of semi-conductors. Meanwhile, he said achieving global competitiveness will entail improvement of infrastructure and the time and cost of doing business.
“What good are the incentives if we don’t have good infrastructure? That is why we are encouraging the government to take part because without their support, even an efficient company will not succeed,” he said.
Support
Berba said the foundation will continue to lobby for support from the public sector with the help of the Center for Industrial Competitiveness of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI-CIC).
DTI-CIC, which is the administrative arm of the PQA, offers quality and productivity programs for industrial competitiveness in both public and private sectors.
Recipients for its Pro-Active Programs Achievement Award in Cebu are Cebu Mitsumi Inc. and Timex Philippines Inc.
