DOMESTIC manufacturers will submit to the government within the month an “industry road map” detailing policy recommendations, subsidies and incentives to facilitate the integration of basic sectors into targeted manufacturing activities.
Bobby Batungbacal, director of the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI), said the country’s manufacturing industry would not be able to scale up its competitiveness if the different sectors were not integrated horizontally and vertically.
“We need to integrate one sector to another. For example, we have shipbuilding but it is not integrated to steel manufacturing and iron-ore production. That is why the shipbuilders rely heavily on imported materials. We also want to integrate farming to food processing,” Batungbacal told the BusinessMirror.
The FPI, he said, will be gathering representatives from its 38 member-associations on August 24 at the Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan, to gather inputs for the industry road map.
The road map, Batungbacal said, will address issues that concern all manufacturers, such as smuggling, incentives, subsidies, power and tax administration.
“These are the needs that cut across industries. FPI is in the better position to strategize across the different manufacturing sectors because we represent 38 industry associations,” he said.
The document, Batungbacal said, would be submitted to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on or before August 31.
This is also deadline set by the DTI for the submission of the sectoral road maps that the different industry associations would submit separately. The sectoral road maps only address the concerns of a specific industry.
The DTI will then consolidate them into one manufacturing work plan.
Batungbacal said since the sectoral and industry road maps complete each other, they are hoping the DTI would use both in finalizing the country’s new manufacturing road map.
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Source: Max V. De Leon, Business Mirror (21 August 2012)
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