Thai lessons on rice and tourism

CEBU – Two of my children are visiting from abroad and so we are off to Cebu for a few days of family time. My daughter, a pre school teacher, is wrapping up her summer vacation from the California school system while my son, based in Singapore, had just returned from a two-week vacation in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia with some grad school classmates.

Our PAL flight on a wide body Airbus 330 was full and I couldn’t help notice that a significant number of passengers are Japanese and Korean families who are obviously on vacation too. When we got to Plantation Bay in Mactan, Efren Belarmino, the general manager commented that they have been having very good occupancy since the last week of July.

In fact, Efren said, all Cebu and Mactan resorts are pretty full these days. Plantation Bay itself had 100 percent occupancy over the weekend. What makes it a little unusual is that this is the start of the lean season. The typhoons are upon us and with the end of summer, the schools in the West are starting to open up a new school year.

Maybe it is because Cebu has just been ranked the third best island in Asia by New York based travel magazine Travel + Leisure. Cebu follows Bali, which ranked first, and Maldives, second. Cebu got a rating of 87.5 points, eight points up from last year’s 79.68 points.

Or it could be partly an effect of the positive press we have been getting lately since P-Noy assumed office. Tour organizers who were reluctant to send tourists our way because of the political risks associated with the past Arroyo administration are now more bullish about us. Tourism is one industry that is quite sensitive to fears of political unrest. Just ask Thailand.

Once the darling of tour operators, Thailand’s tourism industry suffered dearly because of political unrest. But Thailand is bouncing back fast. Tourists are once again shopping and sightseeing all over Bangkok. Thai officials predict a new record year in terms of tourism numbers… way above their already impressive 14 million tourists. We, on the other hand, have a pathetic number that’s even questionable at the official count of three million.

Thailand was once upon a time our Asean twin. Many decades ago, we were comparable to Thailand in terms of level of development, population, population growth rate, GDP and even exchange rate against the US dollar. A decade or so ago, Thailand started to overtake us. Despite the financial crisis of the late 90s that started in Thailand and infected the world, Thailand never looked back from their lead position vis-a-vis the Philippines.

A recent blog I read at the Financial Times offered some lessons our leaders can learn from Thailand. According to Tim Johnston, Korn Chatikavanij, Thailand’s finance minister told the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Bangkok he sees two main areas of opportunity: tourism and food production. Actually, those are areas that are critical for us too.

Thailand’s 14 million tourists account for some 7.5 percent of GDP — but Korn said “we should be thinking in terms of 40, 50, 60 million people a year.” Talk of a big audacious goal!

The Thais also have big plans for agriculture, which still employs 40 percent of the workforce. As Johnston points out, Thailand is already the world’s largest rice exporter. But Korn told newsmen “the opportunity for Thailand to be the main food supplier to countries like China, Korea and India is immense.” I am sorry to say that this is one area where we cannot hope to match Thailand because of our laws, our temperament and our lack of good governance.

For the Thais, it is their goal to be the main food supplier for China, Korea and India. And the sharp rise in tourist arrival targets is ambitious, but the Thai finance chief wants to tap foreign investors to help them out. In terms of dealing with foreign investors, we have a lot to learn from the Thais.

On tourism, the FT blogger reports that Korn revealed that Thailand will have to be more amenable to share the fruits of tourism. “For example letting South Korean tour operators and golf course owners set up shop in Thailand so tourists will feel at home when they arrive, and operators will have a vested interest in persuading their nationals to come to Thailand.”

On food production, Korn told the foreign correspondents he wants to bring in foreign expertise and investment to improve infrastructure – Thailand has already signed a landmark deal with China to build two railway lines.

This approach is not new for us. We have a contract with the Chinese to build a railway line to Clark but the corruption that attended that deal under Ms. Arroyo doomed the project. NorthRail is not only very much delayed and twice over budget, it will also now cover a shorter area only up to Malolos. Who needs a gold plated railroad to Malolos anyway?

On food production, there were letters of intent with some Chinese companies to undertake massive food production projects here with a guaranteed export market in China. But the proposals never got off the ground as questions were raised about the implications of such massive plantations on our land reform program. We just have too many loquacious lawyers and narrow minded so called leaders of farmer groups to enable us to be creative about our agricultural sector.

Actually, Thai success in these two areas of rice and tourism is not automatically assured. In tourism, we have the advantage of political stability with our new government. It may be a little quiet in Thailand now but the grievances of the red shirted peasants are still smoldering and street battles cannot be ruled out just yet.

In agriculture, despite its premier position in rice, the FT blogger noted that “Thai farmers are considerably less productive than their neighbors. Korn says they are trying to get together with Vietnam to make sure they don’t undercut each other on rice sales – and similarly with Indonesia on rubber and Malaysia on palm oil – but the world has already seen China’s reaction when it believes that suppliers are trying to gang up on it: Rio Tinto and BHP are still carrying the bruises.”

We should closely watch what they are doing in these two key areas if we do not want to be completely left behind. Tourism accounts for upward of a million jobs in Thailand. Perhaps our officials in the public sector and local entrepreneurs should try to imagine what such numbers can do to our own economy.

Let us think out of the box because we have a lot of lost ground to cover. Maybe Open Skies is not such a bad thing to have, the views of our airlines notwithstanding. My son, whose job takes him around South and Southeast Asian countries a lot made the comment to me that it is not easy to fly to Manila from just anywhere. He noted that tourism in Malaysia was boosted by Air Asia and Tiger Airways have also contributed greatly to Thailand.

For agriculture, we have to view development beyond our agrarian reform law. There must be some other way of taking care of our farmers rather than letting them “own” a small piece of land whose production would not even be enough to feed a farmer’s immediate family.

Because P-Noy promised change, he is in the best position to upset the traditional apples carts and introduce new thinking in the things we do. After all, it is stupid to continue doing the same old things we have proven decades ago to be ineffective and unable to make a real positive difference to our economy and our lives.

Change

This one’s from Ruth Marbibi.

There’s an old sea story about a ship’s Captain who inspected his sailors, and afterward told the first mate that his men smelled bad.

The Captain suggested perhaps it would help if the sailors would change underwear occasionally.

The first mate responded, “Aye, aye sir, I’ll see to it immediately!” 

The first mate went straight to the sailors berth deck and announced, “The Captain thinks you guys smell bad and wants you to change your underwear.” He continued, “Pittman, you change with Jones, McCarthy, you change with Witkowski, and Brown, you change with Schultz. Now GET TO IT!”

THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS: Someone may come along and promise “Change”, but don’t count on things smelling any better.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]