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Cover Stories
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| By Michael David C. Tan |
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| February 16, 2010 |
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“In a nation that is in crisis, entrepreneurs thrive,” Alexis Pineda, general manager of Chemworld Marketing Corp., says. “(When) companies close, people (lose) jobs. But if you help them (by providing) business opportunities, the combined power of each of the small entrepreneurs can be greater than (the contribution of) one or two major companies.”
That Pineda laments that more emphasis is given to multinational corporations (MNCs) is understandable. “(MNCs) no longer contribute that much to the whole economy because there are just a few of them,” he says. This also holds more weight because it is accepted that 99.6% of the total establishments in the country are identified as small to medium-scale enterprises (SMEs).
Pinoy breed of entrepreneurs
According to Russelle Sagaran-Trinidad, product manager of SME.com.ph, a web portal designed to provide SMEs access and linkage to the global economy through the Internet, Filipino SMEs differ from other SMEs in the world because they account productivity not out of bigger spending, but on the extraction of each dollar spent. “It's actually having the mindset of ‘think big profits but small expense,’” she says.
The Filipino SMEs’ fundamental power is “generally resource-based – tapping the richness in the natural resources of our country, and using/engendering the skills and creativity of our people to produce goods that aren't import-dependent and not falling into the mercies of global fluctuations,” she says. Nonetheless, when the goods are exported, they greatly contribute to the coffers of the national treasury.
Lack of government support
SMEs, by nature, are risky propositions in the eyes of commercial banks and other financial institutions. Thus, according to Trinidad, most of the SMEs that SME.com.ph dealt with are faced by the same problems, mainly financial in nature.
The Philippine government has actually set up a number of agencies to implement certain policies in facilitating assistance to SMEs. Among the latest of these is the SME Unified Lending Opportunities for National Growth (SULONG), which was instituted in 2002 to lower the cost of borrowing of SMEs, and to streamline the lending activities of government financial institutions, among others.
For 2004, SULONG posted P27.05 billion of approved loans for SMEs, benefiting over 15,800 SME accounts nationwide. This is P3.05 billion bigger than the previous year’s P24 billion. The program is expected to lend up to P600 billion by 2010.
However, except for the list of beneficiaries provided by SULONG and affiliated groups, it remains hard to find SMEs that actually benefited from the government’s efforts, though not for the lack of trying, but reflective, perhaps, of the government’s lack of capability to support their big number.
Sariling sikap:
The Filipino concept of making it big on your own
Rommel T. Juan, press relations officer of the Association of Filipino Franchisers, Inc., looks at this issue differently. “Generally, you shouldn’t rely on the government,” he says. “You shouldn’t wait for the blessings to come to you. Instead, you should do something to get (them).”
Pineda agrees, saying: “A good quality of an entrepreneur is (perseverance) – the more problems they face, the more dynamic they become.”
“I believe that SMEs are the hope of the country,” Juan says. “I’m so happy that entrepreneurship is now an ‘in’ thing. There was a time when entrepreneurship wasn’t even heard of. It is my belief that the more entrepreneurs we have, we will have more (people in the) middle-class. And if we raise the level of the people to middle class, then we won’t rely on the government so much.”
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