In need of more human talent

As parents, a common goal that we all share is to be able to provide a good college education for our kids. After that, they should be on their own. Armed with a good education and training, they should be able to find their own place in the sun, but the sad truth is, thousands of our new graduates end up beating on doors, with resumes in hand, with no good prospects of a job.

That’s why I found it disconcerting that at the recent Innovation Summit of the SPIK (Samahan sa Pilipinas ng mga Industriyang Kimikal), they harped on how the country is in dire need of human talent, at least in their industry. They talked about how the industry can drive growth through innovation and how the industry needs a lot of human talent for them to sustain their industry’s growth. This is according to the president of SPIK, Mr. Bobby Batungbakal in an exclusive interview with Business & Leisure.

This multi-billion industry needs chemists, chemical engineers, etc. to drive their R & D sector because this industry is really booming. “Given the growth plans of the chemical industry….we’ll run out of people.” Maybe this is an area that our college students should look into, considering how this industry is growing rapidly.

To be sure, the chemical industry is so broad, running into the plastic industry, oleo, paint, ink, petro and a lot more, and the pillars of the industry are preparing for their rapid growth. They are keen on producing a comprehensive long-term master plan, and in the industry summit where Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Greg Domingo was keynote speaker, the government recognized the industry’s present strength and asked the leaders of the various sector to create their own sectoral plans which could be integrated into a broad chemical master plan. DTI is keen on producing an industry road map and asked the various stakeholders to join hands with government in this project.

An integral part of SPIK’s plans is to create new chemical zones, the idea being that the chemical industry would be more effective when it is integrated. And the best way to manage an integrated chemical industry is to have it in designated chemical zones. Talk about cost synergy. This is not en entirely new idea, as Mr. Batungbakal points out. He referred to the petro-chemical plant in Bataan which was built about 20 years go and which the industry considers as a good model to integrate the chemical industry.

Just how big is the chemical industry in the Philippines today? As of five years ago, this industry was the fourth largest subsector of the manufacturing industry. To quote the figures cited by the SPIK president: “The local production is approximately P330 billion as of 2009… our imports reached $6.9 billion in 2011….The chemical industry grew 20 percent in 2011 as against the previous year, 2010…for the past five years, the industry has been growing at a rate of 13 percent per annum.” Their exports too have been growing. This industry is considered as one of the major exporters of the Philippines, reaching $2.1 billion in 2011 and growing at 22 percent per annum in the last five years.

Mr. Bobby Batungbakal adds: “The domestic production is growing, imports and exports are growing…the total industry is more than P600 billion, which translates to 6.7 percent of the country’s total GDP, so it is a significant industry.” In terms of production, volume is sustained, though prices were seen to erode in the first quarter, chemical being tied closely to the price of oil.

This is an industry worth watching in the next couple of years, and we hope that the road map and the broad chemical master plan as well as the new chemical zones that are envisioned by SPIK see fruition very soon. Work on the master plan has kept the association SPIK and their member companies busy for 2012, working together with the De la Salle Center for Business Research. At the Innovation Fair, they also had industry experts, the academe, and the research community working closely together “so that our work could be aligned to what we could do commercially”. In a 20-year plan that they are crafting (up to year 2030), the country’s chemists hope to engage all sectors and involve the DTI’s Board of Investments (BOI) the Department of Science & Technology (DOST), EMB and other government agencies to spur the industry to greater heights. After two big workshops they recently concluded, they are set to submit their recommendations by August of this year.

The two biggest recent investments in the chemical industry are from Petron and JG Summit, and the chemical industry is very excited about them. One is Petron’s $1.8 billion refinery project which involves the additional production of propylene and aromatic plants. JG Summit’s investment, on the other hand involves the NAFTA cracker, a chemical plant that converts NAFTA into ethylene and propylene which JG Summit already produces currently. This is a $700-million investment, also a helluva lot of money indeed, but as Mr. Batungbakal says, “For us to be competitive in the world market, you have to be integrated into the NAFTA cracker industry.” For us mortals, this kind of money is hard to comprehend, and the relevance and value of the NAFTA cracker is just as Greek, but the country’s chemists are still agog with the magnitude of this investment and how it can make the Philippines relevant in the NAFTA cracker global industry. Work has started on this huge project and the plant is scheduled to be commissioned sometime in 2014.

The Samahan sa Pilipinas ng mga Industriyang Kimikal (SPIK) is a multi-sectoral organization with over 60 members. Established about 35 years ago, it is an active and dynamic organization, holding four general membership meetings every year. Their biggest advocacy is environmental health and safety.

A lot of fun in the travel industry

The recent well-attended staging of Travel Madness Expo at the SMX last July 20 to 22 was reason enough to say that the travel industry is presently into a lot of fun.

Organized by Travel Innovators, with Raymond Lee as president and Ark Travel’s top honcho Ms. Paz Alberto as vice president, the hugely successful event’s activities highlighted the Department of Tourism’s tourism slogan “It’s More Fun in the Philippines.”    

Ms. Paz Alberto admits that most, if not all, travel agencies are affected by the online booking that’s being done by most airlines, they still enjoy continued brisk business due to their “creative marketing efforts together with their sincere and service-oriented dealings with their clients.”

Congratulations to Travel Innovators for the success of Travel Madness Expo 2012. 

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.

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