Saturday, June 30, 2007 Talk back: Tom-Gwen spat 2 By Pert Cabatana
(Second of Two Parts)
IN the survey, the countries are evaluated along eight different attributes: political/social instability, local currency, infrastructure, legal system/legal procedure, lack industrial accumulation, intellectual property right, labor cost increase, and taxation.
Note that the Philippines is ranked slightly better than Vietnam in seven out of the eight attributes.
The lone attribute where the Philippines was ranked worse than Vietnam is “Political/Social Instability..”
And note that the gap in this particular attribute is so vast that it overwhelms whatever advantage we may have had in the seven other attributes.
Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Gov. Gwen Garcia have to go if they are not capable of elevating the quality of their debate and governance to a more productive, enlightening, uplifting and inspiring level.
We all need to focus on our real priorities: infrastructure, education, investments.
They’re just wasting too much time and resources on their personal feud.
On education, which I believe should be top, top priority, I also learned during my trip that Vietnam’s education ministry has embarked on a program of producing 20,000 PhDs (similar to what China did in the ‘80s and ‘90s) and linking with US universities on specific technologies.
Vietnam is also spending US $20 million/year on their English-proficiency program. What these do is actually prepare Vietnam to go up the value chain.
They’re thinking way ahead and already realize that their cheap labor advantage will not stay forever.
In the maintime, here we are with our cost structure already uncompetitive and our government leaders doing nothing but fight each other and position themselves for the next election. They have to go.
If we continue to tolerate Tom and Gwen, Vietnam will surpass us in the next 10-15 years.
It’s definitely time for us to take a decisive action.
