Tuesday, October 17, 2006 Task force to handle competitiveness drive
A TASK group, not a council as originally planned, has been ordered formed to be the prime mover of the first ever national competitiveness drive.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued last week Executive Order (EO) 571 creating a public-private sector task force on Philippine competitiveness during the national competitiveness summit held in Malacañang last October 6.
The task force is in charge of formulating a national program to save the Philippines from its rank among the cellar dwelling one third of economies globally in terms of competitiveness, and lift it to the top third in four years.
The President ordered the release of P10 million from the funds of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to activate and sustain operations of the task force.
It will be made up of five representatives from government and an equal number from the private sector. EO 571 specifically named the DTI, the Department of Agriculture, Department of Finance, the Department of Transportation and Communications and the chairman of the Commission on Higher Education to represent the government.
There will be two representatives from the business community, the senior adviser to the President on international competitiveness, one from a policy research institution and another from civil society.
Checked by Philexport and Features, sources in DTI and private business said representatives from both government and the private sectors have not been named.
On the part of the business community, Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) president Donald Dee said as initial counterpart of the PCCI, the biggest business group will be providing the people that will man the secretariat for the task force.
The secretariat will be headed by two directors for operations, one for government and one for the private sector. The office of the director for the private sector will be funded by private business groups.
It was determined during the pre-summit workshops that to sustain the national competitiveness agenda, a full-time secretariat will have to be organized. This was the formula behind the continued success of the Export Development Council (EDC) in pushing for reforms and overseeing the execution of a rolling export development plan.
The task force, if the presidential order is to be followed to the letter, will be more powerful than the EDC. Directly under the Office of the President, it has been empowered to direct specific departments and agencies of government to attend to the bottlenecks and problems constraining the country's ability to compete here and abroad.
It was also mandated to recommend proposed laws to Congress that builds up on national efforts to win and to involve local governments in pushing the national agenda at ground level. (Abe P. Belena/Philexport News and Features/Sunnex)
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