|
The Philippines needs to address various issues affecting its competitiveness, particularly those of labor market rigidity.
"There are certain rigidities in the system that we need to address and those come in the form of regulation. Labor market rigidity is penalizing our competitiveness," said Guillermo Luz, co-chairman of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC), in a meeting.
Luz said this following the result of the Global Competitiveness Report indicating that labor market efficiency among the pillars where the Philippines ranked low. Other major areas of competitiveness that the country must address include governance, infrastructure, education and innovation.
To address this issue, service exporters cited the need to provide good education and improve government facilities to develop more training programs for the workers.
Manolito M. Madrasto, executive director of the Philippine Constructions Association (PCA), said investments are coming into the industry because of the relatively lower construction cost.
He thus expressed concern over the implementation particularly of the proposed four-day workweek which could raise construction cost.
"When that happens, we can kiss goodbye to investments into the country," he said.
PCA president Levy Espiritu bared that the Philippines and other Asean countries are close to re-discuss the harmonization of trade skill levels of their construction workers.
"In our discussion with Asean neighbors like Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, the productivity of our skilled labors is their envy. What we are doing now is harmonizing the trade skills of our workers," he said.
Paul Santos, Vice President for External Affairs of the Philippine Retailers Association, said although retailing is one of the more competitive businesses in the country, industry players are concerned about the rigidity of the labor market.
Santos said these problems may translate to higher costs to the companies which will inevitably be passed onto consumers.
For his part, Feliciano Torres, vice president of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), shared the view of an executive of a company giving services to different factories and a service provider to different parts of the world.
"He said it is very important that one should be viable to take care of his competitiveness. Competition will be tight and everybody would be cautious in how they can have flexibility in their operations. The name of the game is flexibility. If you lose flexibility in your operation, you are dead," Torres related.
He said the business executive also believed that the Philippines is still a contender for investment opportunities, citing its labor policy and practices which are now acceptable to foreign operators. -- Danielle Venz, PHILEXPORT News and Features
|
