Kudos to this year's winners of the Go Negosyo Awards!

From what we heard from Mr. Joey Concepcion himself and the prestigious members of this year’s awards rites, the winners were truly deserving, culled from a long list of hardworking and dedicated micro and small entrepreneurs. Most of them are into retailing, with just a few from the farming sector. What was significant though not at all surprising was that this year’s winners were predominantly from the women’s sector. 

According to Mr. Sanjiv Vohra, Citi Bank country officer for the Philippines (the bank is a major co-presenter of the awards), women have traditionally dominated the awards since a few years back when Go Negosyo was conceptualized. Though some of the husbands were called upon to receive due recognition for their role in the business, it was clearly the women who provided the backbone of the fledgling business endeavor, who served as the rudder when the family was drifting aimlessly through meal-less days until the germ of an idea provided by Go Negosyo and other NGOs came to light a bulb in their minds.

For most of these families, microfinance is indeed heaven-sent. The Microfinance Council of the Philippines (MCP) was one of the organizers of the awarding ceremony. According to Ms. Lalaine M. Joyas, executive director of MCP, this year’s batch was especially interesting. Two of them came from ethnic minorities, specifically the Ifugao and Muslim, the latter notwithstanding the turmoil that keeps brewing in their part of the world in Mindanao. Even as we write this, shocking news of a senseless massacre involving mostly women and even journalists has reached us in Metro Manila, and we wonder how the people of Mindanao can go about their daily business given their predilection to violent crimes. The awardee, in the midst of all these, must be truly deserving.

As for the former, not too many doors have been opened to our brothers from the chilly North, a largely forgotten sector of our society that has been too often relegated to tribal folks, uneducated and living in a past civilization. Now the Ifugao, while still cognizant of his heritage, seeks better education, equal if not better opportunities in business and professional advancement. Kudos!

The jurors had two categories to choose the winners from: the Maunlad category where the entrepreneur has assets worth P300,000 up to P1 million, and the Masikap category for entrepreneurs with assets of less than P300,000. The criteria set for the winners include assets, growth of the business in the year judged, number of employees, social responsibility, and the businessman’s contribution to the development of the local economy. The winners were clients of the Microfinance Council of the Philippines whose leaders have made it their advocacy to teach people how to fish instead of just giving them their daily ration of fish.

The MCP is the apex network organization of micro finance institutions started some 10 years ago and they make it their business to have a consolidated view of the total microfinance industry. There are three types of microfinance institutions: the non-government organizations (NGO), banks and cooperatives. The MCP membership is comprised mostly of NGOs now, though they have some rural and thrift banks and I think just one or two cooperatives. They hope to get more of the latter to get involved in their advocacy. At present, they have 38 micro finance institutes and 7 associate members, making it a total of 45 members, under their umbrella.

From the MCP president, Ruben de Lara, we got some valuable nuggets of information. The average size of microfinance loans in the Philippines is from P5,000 to P8,000. He shared that one of their applicants turned down their offer of a P5,000 loan, saying she couldn’t afford to repay it. She only needed P500 to start a banana cue business. She has indeed managed to pay back her P500 loan and when the MCP later on checked on how she was doing, she was most grateful, narrating how things have improved tremendously for her family. Where before they used to make do with one meal a day, they now eat three times a day. Mr. de Lara quipped that he hoped they were not eating banana cue three times a day. The family has ventured into another business, the “Kalan” business which has already gotten off the ground. But they remain poor.

His whole point is that microfinance alone is not the solution to poverty, though it is a powerful tool if all camps cooperate fully towards its success. According to him, whereas the global definition of poor involved living below $2/day, in the Philippines, our defined poverty threshold is those with an annual income of P18,000 or P1,500 a month. Based on this, more than 40 percent of our population is living within the poverty threshold.

Also fighting poverty fiercely is our Asean neighbor Bangladesh. Where our averaged-sized microfinance loans are from P5,000 to P8,000, theirs is $200, and where their outreach is seven to eight million people, ours is 800,000, with the MCP responsible for 500,000 of this number.

The Go Negosyo program is indeed the right vehicle in our pursuit of a poverty-free Philippines. As things stand right now, we’re far from reaching this goal, but empowering the hard-working marginalized sector through entrepreneurship is one big step towards this. As Mr. Sanjiv Vohra of Citi says, 90 percent of the enterprises in the Philippines comes from the medium and small enterprises (including the micro enterprises), and this represents about a third of our GDP. The Philippines is recognized globally as a forerunner of micro entrepreneurship, thanks to the founders of Go Negosyo and other NGOs tirelessly working on this great advocacy.

The Bangko Sentral is also one of the moving forces behind this advocacy and is a valued partner in the Go Negosyo Awards.

Incidentally, the MCP is embarking on a 3-part series of conferences on micro financing adopting the theme of Beyond Credit. They used to hold these in Metro Manila but they have decided to bring the symposia to other major parts of the country: the first (Nov. 26-27) in Cebu with Justice Renato Puno as Guest Speaker and the second in Davao in May 2010, after the elections. The third symposium will be the global one.

Their wholistic approach to poverty eradication is indeed laudable. They have extended a helping hand to farmers whose average loans range from P25,000 to P35,000 per. The program includes connecting them to technology and optimizing their prices when they unload their production in the market.

As for Go Negosyo, they are set to embark on their Tagumpay Mula Sa Kahirapan program in the next few weeks. Watch out for their caravans and Nego seminars. These will surely be educational and inspiring, to say the least.

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Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.

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