MANILA, Philippines — The 37th Philippine Business Conference (PBC), the country’s biggest annual business meeting in the country, is urging the government to focus on agriculture, education, energy, environment, good governance, housing and construction, industry, intellectual property, mining, public private partnership (PPP), small and medium sized enterprise (SME) development, taxation, trade policy, and transportation and logistics.
The list comprised the 37th PBC Resolutions the business community would present to President Aquino during his speech at the concluding plenary tonight at the historic landmark Manila Hotel. This year’s PBC has a theme “One. Global. Filipino. Driving Partnerships, Sharpening our Competitive Edge.”
The PBC is the biggest annual business gathering organized by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce. The PBC is the culmination of a year-long consultation of the PCCI with its regional chambers nationwide. The PBC Resolution comprises the summary of all the recommendations during the regional PCCI consultations.
It has been a PCCI tradition to present the PBC Resolutions to the President to highlight this annual business event.
On energy, the PCCI is urging the executive department to continue formulating a five-year electric power roadmap with specific action programs and milestones focused on achieving three goals namely bringing power rate to a competitive level, sustaining base and reserve power in Luzon and resolving the Mindanao power supply situation.
“Resolution urging the application of bold and critical strategic solutions to all pending applications that will further increase power rate with the intent to first stop the power rate escalation at the moment before bringing it down to a competitive level,” the 37th PBC consolidated resolutions stated.
The PCCI also calls for the president to accelerate the effective process and transparent awarding of oil gas, coal explorations and enhance the current ground rules in order to encourage more legitimate participants.
The Department of Energy and the government financial institutions must consider innovative technology sharing and transfer giving preference to green projects and green jobs creation.
In agriculture, PCCI is urging all local government units (LGUs) to support the propagation of medium and high breed seeds for rice crops and vegetable products. They also proposed the creation of research institutes for fruits and vegetables.
For education, the business community is asking the national government to help address the job mismatch and improve education infrastructure.
For mining, the PCCI said the government should allocate R&D resources in the exploration and development of rare earth mining operations.
For the PPP, the business group asked for transparency thru the amendment of the implementing rules and regulations of the BOT Law especially the deletion of granting of provisional franchise. They also asked for the streamlining of the right of way negotiation and court procedures which delay the project development.
==============================================================================
By: Bernie Cahiles-Magkilat
Source: Manila Bulletin, Oct. 12, 2011
To view the original article, click here.
Comment here